


Where Your Soul Goes You Will Find Me

by peanutbutterapple



Category: The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Fix-It, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, alive Tommy Falk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 02:49:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14865204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peanutbutterapple/pseuds/peanutbutterapple
Summary: Tommy's eyes are soft, too, but they’re always soft. He looks at Gabe as Gabe looks back at him.Gabe stuffs his feet back into his boots, kisses Tommy on the side of his mouth, and then slips out the door into the wet Thisby wind.(An alternate ending to The Scorpio Races)





	Where Your Soul Goes You Will Find Me

**Author's Note:**

> A few months ago I read this book with a friend and we decided that Tommy Falk needed to live, and I needed to be the one to write it. I HOPE YOU LIKE THIS RACHEL!!!!!!!! 
> 
> And as usual thanks to Katie for editing this, even though you haven't even read the book. I'm glad you love Tommy and Gabe (and Beech a;ldskfj) now :')
> 
> (sorry if some details from the book have been abandoned or changed, I'm forgetful)

 

GABE

“You know how when you smell something so often,” Tommy says, “it just stops being a smell? You encounter it every day so your nose says ‘mhm, smelled that before’ and gives up on acknowledging the scent at all?”

“Sure,” Gabe says, shucking off his boots in the doorway. They’d been caked in mud from his walk, but he’d shaken most of it off against the doorway steps. He hopes Tommy isn’t talking about his feet. His lumpy socks meet the light of day for the first time since early that morning.

“That’s how my nose feels about you and fish,” Tommy says. “You used to walk in this flat and that’s all I could smell for hours. Now, I smell it long enough to think, ‘Oh, Gabe’s here’ and then everything smells normal again. My nose just doesn’t care anymore.”

Gabe stares at the tiny clump of dried mud on the tip of his left sock, eyes zeroing in on it and then not seeing it at all. He looks up.

Tommy sits on the spindly chair in front of the chunky, mismatched wooden desk he’d gotten cheap from a lawn sale from a house down the hill. It had been difficult getting it up the hill, especially once it started to rain and the grass grew slick and the mud soppy. But Beech had helped, and they’d all felt quite accomplished once they’d gotten it through Tommy’s flat door.

Watermarks still stain the surface of the wood, glistening in the pale sunlight sneaking in through the window. Tommy’s fiddle sits on top of it. He looks to be fixing a broken string. Gabe meets Tommy’s eyes and there’s a crooked half smile on his face.

He wishes Tommy had been talking about his feet.

The flat is warm and comfortable and cramped with Tommy’s things and it should feel good after a long day along the cold sea, but Gabe is suddenly overcome with such a deep hollowness he begins to shiver.

Tommy’s expression changes. “Gabe?”

“I’m fine,” Gabe says. And then, “I need to leave.”

Tommy doesn’t say, _but you just got here!_ He doesn’t say, _to go where?_ He doesn’t say, _what about Puck and Finn?_

He looks at him for only a second or two. He says, “Well, alright.”

Relief washes over him from head to toe because he knows he means it, and Tommy knows he means it. He presses his back against the wooden door behind him, shoulders falling as he breathes. The hinges creak slightly.

Tommy watches him, quietly, a moment longer before he stands. He crosses the four feet of space from his desk to the door and gently, he places his hands on either side of Gabe’s neck, hands warm and rough.

Familiar.

A thumb brushes against his jaw. Gabe closes his eyes. The coarse skin of Tommy’s hands, calloused from horse riding, feels nice. A thought prickles his mind and Gabe leans forward, pressing his forehead to Tommy’s.

“Soon,” he says. “As soon as possible.”

“Okay,” Tommy says, and Gabe feels the edge of his breath.

He stays like that for a moment, pressed against Tommy, listening to the sound of his quiet breathing. The cliff breeze whistles gently outside the window, the ceiling creaks with footsteps as someone moves around in the flat above.

He pulls away. Opens his eyes. Tommy’s are already looking at him, dark hair hanging low over his eyebrows.

The familiar snake of anxiety twists around his neck as he thinks of it, but for once it doesn’t quite suffocate him. “I have to tell Puck and Finn.”

Tommy taps the pad of his index finger against the exposed skin at the bottom of Gabe’s neck. His hands rest along his collarbone. “Yes, that’s important.” The line of his lips have softened.

Tommy's eyes are soft, too, but they’re always soft. He looks at Gabe as Gabe looks back at him.

Gabe stuffs his feet back into his boots, kisses Tommy on the side of his mouth, and then slips out the door into the wet Thisby wind. 

He doesn’t say anything about the Scorpio Races.

 

 

TOMMY

Tommy didn’t remember the first time he saw Gabe.

Then again, he couldn’t really remember the first time he saw most people. That was the thing about Thisby. There wasn’t really anyone left to meet by the time you got old enough to remember meeting them.

They ran around at school with all the other boys. Roughhousing in the schoolyard during free time, riding on sticks pretending they were in the Scorpio Races. Tommy did remember mauling Gabe’s stick with his own and obliterating it to splinters. Gabe was not his friend that day.

But Tommy could say it started at school.

Tommy’s original deskmate in fifth year had been Cody MacClare. He was a twig of a boy with a mop of blonde hair on his head, and he wasn’t terrible – he never caused Tommy any trouble, anyway - but one day he jabbed his bony fingers in the eyes of the boy sitting across the aisle for stealing his cinnamon twist at lunch, and that was the end of that. Tommy could hardly blame him- it _was_ a cinnamon twist. Still, their teacher, a plump woman by the name of Miss Haggarty, decided to switch his seat with a student sitting in the front row.

That was how a scrawny, pasty-faced Gabe came to be his deskmate instead. He didn’t look thrilled to have been pushed back two rows, but Tommy guessed that he more or less forgot the stick-horse incident (“I never forgot that, you prick,” Gabe would claim years later), so Tommy figured his chances at making friends with him weren’t so bad.

He leaned over as Miss Haggarty began writing out a math problem on the dusty blackboard at the head of the room. “Hi,” he whispered.

Gabe’s eyes slid to him.

Tommy held his gaze for the space of half a second before Gabe’s eyes slid away again, back to the front of the room. He re-gripped his stubby pencil over the blank piece of paper in front of him. His face was very freckled.

Tommy sat back in his chair. Miss Haggarty said something about “every number multiplied by five ends in five or zero,” and he pulled his own blank sheet of paper towards him.

He wrote in the corner with his rather ungraceful hand, _Hi._

He slid it across the desk at Gabe.

Gabe looked at it for far longer than it took to read one word, but then, finally, he raised his pencil and wrote _Hi_ beneath it in straight, thin letters.

Tommy pulled the paper back and began to scribble.

_Welcome to the best desk in class!_

Gabe’s face remained impassive as he read it. Supremely unimpressed. Tommy was suddenly struck with doubt, but then Gabe lifted his pencil.

_Why is it the best?_

Tommy grinned. Without writing an answer, he pushed the paper to the side and pointed to something carved into the nicked, ancient wood of the desk. Forever inscribed by some past, saintly student was a very dirty word, indeed.

Gabe blinked, and then his face broke into a smile – a half smile, a hidden smile, because they _were_ in class, but a smile.

Tommy pushed the paper back over. _Told you,_ he wrote.

 _Okay,_ Gabe wrote back.

They both turned back to the front of the room, secret tucked smugly between them.

 

 

GABE

 

Tommy meets him halfway home from the hotel that night.

The sky is a stormy gray, the wind is roaring and the air is wet, and Gabe can feel the way his hair has been whipped into damp strings around his face. His fingers are numb, curled into fists beneath the sleeves of his coat.

He’s watching the way the long grass leaves muddy imprints on the leather of his boots when he hears someone cry out ahead of him amongst the sound of the wind.

Gabe looks up, and though the sky is gray and darkening, he sees immediately that the figure is Tommy. His heart drops slightly in his chest, but he doesn’t slow his pace. He doesn’t quicken it, either.

“Gabe Connolly!” Tommy says once he’s close enough. The wind blows his hair clear out of his face, the normally soft, smooth skin of his forehead creased down between his eyes.

Gabe doesn’t have to ask and Tommy doesn’t give him time.

“What was your _sister_ doing down the beach today looking for bowler hats?”  he demands once they’re face to face. The air has turned misty and his long eyelashes clump together, eyes serious, cheeks pink from the cold.

“What is anyone doing when they look for a bowler hat?” Gabe says. He pushes past him.  

“They’re looking for a horse to race on, is what they’re doing.” Tommy turns and falls into step beside him. The wind whistles in his ears, but Gabe hears the way Tommy falls quiet, and something inside Gabe revists the pain he felt last night, when she told him she was racing. “Gabe, what about-”

“It’s still happening,” he says. “We’re still leaving.”

Tommy goes quiet again. Gabe stops dead in the grass and grabs his arm, coat wet and frigid beneath his fingertips. Tommy meets his eyes. Wind whips his black hair back and forth.  

“I told her till after the races,” Gabe says. “I’m only staying till after the races.”

“Do you know how _dangerous-”_

Gabe almost laughs. There is a knife somewhere beneath his coat, and it’s poking through the skin of his chest. Did he _know._ “You try stopping her.”

Tommy’s eyes are clear and serious. “But why?”

Gabe lets go of Tommy and starts walking again. “She says it’s for the money,” he says. “I think she’s just trying to get me to stay longer. She’s stupid, is what she is. She’s never even been near a water horse.”

The thought doesn’t cause as much blind anger as it had the evening before – he’d seethed in bed all night long – so much as it does a slight wave of nausea, as he says it out loud. He sets his face as he looks out and sees the lights of the town beginning to glow in the fog.

Tommy doesn’t say anything else all the way back to his flat, and Gabe is grateful for it. By the time they step inside, they’re both damp to the bone. Gabe’s hair sticks to the sides of his head as Tommy shakes his out, spraying droplets everywhere.

They shuck their boots off, and their coats, and Tommy gives Gabe one of his dry sweaters that might be Gabe’s anyway. He leaves Gabe to change as he bustles in the kitchen, and it isn’t long before the whistle of the kettle sounds and then there’s a hot mug being pushed into Gabe’s hands, still numb with cold.

He sinks into the cushions of Tommy’s old, lumpy couch.

Why did nothing ever go his way?

He feels Tommy sit down beside him, warm and dry and familiar. The scent of the tea fills the tiny room as the wind beats against the window outside. It’s full on raining, now. The room is quiet.

Gabe takes a sip from his mug. It’s black tea, but it makes him think of the mint tea Puck made last night. The taste goes slightly rancid in his mouth.

“She’ll need that money, though,” he says quietly, staring into his mug. “She and Finn.”

Tommy doesn’t say anything, and Gabe doesn’t have to be a mind reader to know that he’s thinking Puck will need to _survive_ first.

“We _are_ leaving,” he says, tightening his hands around the mug. It’s hot, too hot, but he doesn’t really care. “I made that clear.”

“Good,” Tommy says, and Gabe can feel him looking at him. “You know how much I want to see all the bands play, in actual pubs with people in them.”

“Exactly,” Gabe says, and he feels himself relax slightly. There’s a slight headache nudging at his temple. At least with the change of clothes he doesn’t smell like fish.

Tommy pulls the sleeve of his sweater over his one of his hands and reaches over to rub Gabe’s hair dry. He’s not very gentle about it, but when he pulls away, Gabe feels himself smiling, hair hanging in knots over his eyes, head feeling like a nest.

“I think that’s better,” says Tommy, looking at him appraisingly. Then he brushes Gabe’s hair from his eyes with much gentler fingers, and Gabe can see him clearly.

Tommy’s hair curls around the ends as it dries, eyes a dark and inky blue. Their familiar softness is back. Tommy traces the tip of one of his fingers along the skin beneath Gabe’s left eye. “You need sleep.”

Gabe has felt the itch of exhaustion all day. He isn’t sure he actually even slept last night. And judging from the silence of their bedroom, he doubts Finn really had, either. 

Gabe’s stomach twists again at the thought of Finn. They _need_ that money.

“I hate this,” he says quietly, clutching the mug. “If Puck- how will Finn-? And if I- how will _they-”_

Tommy pushes his hand into Gabe’s damp hair, his fingers warm. “Things will happen as they happen.”

Gabe likes how Tommy doesn’t say something like, _it’ll be fine,_ or, _it’ll all work out,_ or _everything will be okay._ It’s something Gabe loves about Tommy, that he doesn’t make promises he can’t keep.

The rain pounds the thin walls and Gabe finally feels warm again. He leans into Tommy’s touch and Tommy brings his head to his shoulder.

Gabe feels the press of warm lips to his forehead, and they sit there for a long time with the quiet and the rain.

_

 

When Gabe wakes up, his mug sits cold on the floor beside the couch and he’s half on top of Tommy. It’s pitch dark outside the windows, the rain a gentle patter. The single light in the room flickers slightly, like it does in poor weather, which means it’s nearly always flickering.

Gabe wonders what time it is, and when he sits up it startles him to find that Tommy’s eyes are open.

“Tom,” he says, catching his breath. “I thought you were asleep.”

Tommy smiles, light flickering over his face. Shadows fall over the lines of his lips. “You snore too loud.”

“I do not,” Gabe says, but he actually has no idea if he snores or not.

Tommy only smiles more widely, and Gabe pushes himself up. He runs a hand through his hair, sticking up in all directions from Tommy’s pat-down earlier, but dry.

Gabe holds his hand out once he gets to his feet. “Come on.”

“What a gentleman,” Tommy says, letting Gabe pull him up, “escorting me to my bed.”

“Don’t get excited,” Gabe mutters as they cross into the tiny bedroom mere feet away, where a mattress takes up nearly the entire floor. Tommy presses his lips against Gabe’s ear because he’s always been indiscriminate about where he puts his mouth on Gabe’s body.

They fall onto the mattress, and Gabe pushes his head into Tommy’s warm shoulder, letting the worries of the day keep themselves distant under the cover of night. He feels the edge of sleep creeping upon him again.

Tommy says, “I’m going to race.”

Gabe opens his eyes, fingers curling tightly around Tommy’s arm before the words have even sunk in.

He feels Tommy’s fingers play with the hair over the shell of his ear, his touch soft. “Puck and Finn need that money,” he says, his voice barely a hum. “I’m going to increase their odds.”

 _No,_ Gabe thinks, the word nearly blinding his thoughts. _No, no, no, no, no-_

But Tommy keeps playing with his hair. “It’ll be nice, anyway,” he says after a pause, his voice a touch lighter, “to have one more chance to compete in the races.”

 _No._ Gabe’s heart beats hard in his chest, like it’s pumping his veins full of cool, black dread. _Why-_ he thinks wildly, _why is everyone I care about controlled by these water horses?_

He almost tells Tommy he wants to leave, he wants to leave _right now,_ get on a boat first thing in the morning and never come back.

But Tommy’s hand has fallen still around his cheek, and as Gabe’s ears clear of his own thoughts, he knows by the gentle sound of his breathing that he is asleep.

Gabe listens to that, and the rain, as the hours of darkness stretch in the tiny room.

 

 

 

TOMMY

 

Tommy hadn’t always wanted to leave Thisby.

“What if,” Tommy said, lowering his wooden pipe flute, the breeze suddenly quiet around them. He tilted his face back in the sun. “What if a water horse came out of the water right now and ate Beech’s feet?”

When he peeked an eye open, he saw Beech shrugging from several feet away. “Suppose I’d have no feet, then.” His bare feet hung over the dock. He didn’t even twitch, eyes closed against the sky.

It was one of those beautiful days of blue sky and sparkling sea that made it hard to believe that the water horses somewhere beneath the current could be anything but harmless, noble sea creatures. The breeze ruffled Tommy’s hair.

He made to lift his pipe flute to his lips again and paused. From the other side of Beech, Gabe caught his eye.

Gabe’s gaze flickered to Beech’s boots sitting behind him, laces sprawled over the old, scuffed wood of the dock.

Tommy slipped his flute into his pocket.

Gabe leaned forward silently, arm outstretched.

Tommy held out his hands.

Then, quick as a flash, Gabe had one of Beech’s boots in his grasp, and then it was in Tommy’s, and the other was in Gabe’s hands, and then Tommy had both and Beech had finally noticed what was happening.   

“Hey!” he yelped, grabbing for the air. “My mum’ll have your throat if one of those go in the water!”

“Ooh, his _mum,_ Tom, did you hear that?” said Gabe, grinning widely and tossing Tommy both of the shoes around Beech with ease.

“Don’t go acting like you’re better than me,” said Beech, face going red. “You’re no better off than I am. Give those _back!”_

He made a lunge for them, but Tommy held them out of reach, grinning. It was only when Beech kept going that he felt his smile begin to falter. 

“Beech-!”

Gabe reached his hands out in a hapless gesture from the other side of the dock, eyes going wide. Tommy made to grab Beech’s arm but only caught the edge of his shirtsleeve.

Beech hit the water with a splash - not a very large one, but that might have been in relation to the size of the sea – and immediately went under.

Gabe ran over, skidding to a halt beside Tommy before he sent himself over the edge. “He can swim, right?”

Tommy opened his mouth to say _of course he can_. But when Beech did not surface, a less appealing thought flittered into his mind.

It wasn’t uncommon on Thisby for people not to bother to learn to swim. Why bother when there were creatures in the sea that would eat you? Suddenly, water hourses were not the only threat, no matter how prettily the sea sparkled up at them.

Without a second thought, Tommy grabbed the end of his shirt and pulled it clean over his head.

“Tommy-” he thought he heard Gabe say like a warning, but then, with a mighty shock to his skin, he was in the icy blue waters. It did not seem to matter to the Thisby sea that it was summer.

He opened his eyes and found the blurry figure of Beech below.

Tommy was a good swimmer- or, at least, his thirteen-year-old body managed the best that it could. Luckily, his best included pulling Beech Gratton from the salty depths.

They both sucked in enormous breaths when their faces hit the air, and then Beech sucked in another and gasped out, furious, “You _bloody_ idiot.”

Tommy shook his hair out, heart pounding and chest heaving. He still held Beech’s elbow. “What?”

The sun glinted off of Beech’s wet hair, almost blinding. “You didn’t need to- I wasn’t drowning!”

Tommy’s eyebrows flew upward. “Yeah? Then what were you doing hanging down there so deep?”

Beech sucked in another breath to answer, and Tommy couldn’t tell if his face was so red from nearly drowning or because he was so angry.

“Guys!” Gabe’s voice cut through the air.  “Tom, Beech-”

He held his hands over the edge of the dock, beckoning them back. Tommy’s shirt was in a heap beside him and he squinted into the sun, his face gone pink from exposure. There was a particular apprehension written across his features as he held his hands out for them.

“Come on,” Tommy said, tightening his grip on Beech’s elbow and dragging him through the water.

Gabe helped Beech back onto the dock first, and then Tommy. His grasp was warm as he pulled him back up, the pads of his hands surprisingly soft, grip steady. Gabe grunted as he pulled Tommy over the edge of the dock, tipping backward as Tommy pitched forward, nearly landing flat on top of him.

Tommy caught himself on the deck with his free hand, palm nearly splintering itself on the wood. Gabe blinked up at him, his shirt splattered with water, and for the space of a microsecond Tommy was inexplicably aware of the fact that he was very wet and very bare-chested.

Then his breath caught up with him and he rolled away, flat on his back on the dry dock.  He could hear Beech panting on his other side, several feet to their left.

“Your shoe’s dry, Beech,” Gabe said after a beat of silence, and Tommy let out a huff of a laugh. The sun beat down on the front of his closed eyelids, his vision a deep red.

 “I’ll deck you both,” said Beech, but his voice sounded ragged and he was still panting. “I will. I swear.”

“Okay, Beech,” Gabe said.

“I’m serious,” Beech said. He coughed a few times, like his breath got caught in his throat or water had gotten into his lungs, before he said hoarsely, “I can’t wait to get off this fuckin’ island.”

Tommy laughed again and finally pushed himself up, blinking his eyes back open. Everything was tinged a strange green as his eyes adjusted. “Okay, Beech,” he said again, mirroring Gabe’s words and tone.

Tommy caught the way Beech opened his eyes into the direct sunlight. “Shut up, the pair of you.” He sat up, and Tommy was surprised to find his eyes were blazing when he looked around at both of them. “Stop being this way with me. I’m serious. I’m _serious._ I know what I’m saying, and someday I’ll go to the mainland and find some friends who aren’t pricks.”

“Geez, Beech,” Tommy said, slightly alarmed at his words. He glanced at Gabe, whose eyebrows had risen halfway up his forehead. “We were just having a laugh. But- we’re sorry. Really.”

Beech glared at them a moment longer. Then all the fight left his body, and his shoulders hunched in on himself. Where Gabe and Tommy were lanky and wiry and “far too skinny” (Dory Maude’s words, not theirs), Beech was stockier, his shoulders wide and meaty. His wet shirt clung to them.

“Whatever,” Beech said, and Tommy felt worse at the note of misery that sounded in his voice. He didn’t know what else to say.

The three of them sat in silence, Tommy and Beech dripping and the water lapping and the breeze whistling past their ears.  The sun still hung high in the clear blue sky.

“Beech,” Gabe said suddenly. “Did you- mean that? About leaving the island?”

Tommy looked over at him. Something funny and uncomfortable slithered into his chest at Gabe’s words, particularly at the way he’d said them. Stilted, almost nervous. Like he was looking for confirmation.

“Yeah,” Beech said without taking a moment to consider, rubbing his hand over his face. “I’ve never wanted to stay. But since my dad’s started apprenticing me, I just- I don’t want to stay at all. I’m not cut out to be a butcher. I don’t _want_ to be a butcher.” He said it with that fierceness again, and Tommy was suddenly filled with dread. He hadn’t realized Beech was _serious_ about leaving.

When he looked back over at Gabe and found him nodding, like he _agreed,_ Tommy’s dread increased tenfold, leaking into his bones.

“What?” Tommy heard himself say, like they were in some sort of glass room and he was sitting on the outside.

Gabe looked up at him, and the way the sun shone on his eyes had them glinting gold. He shrugged. He looked away. “I don’t know, I’ve always just felt…like I’d leave some day.”

“But-” Tommy started. But _why?_ Gabe had his parents and his brother and sister here, he had friends, he had everything he needed, so why would he leave? Tommy had always _heard_ of people leaving, but they had actual _reasons._ Beech had only just started butchering, his mind could change, surely. Why would anyone want to leave when everything they needed was here?

Tommy couldn’t imagine leaving his parents, all of his siblings, his house with the chickens in the backyard and the horses. He’d hate to leave Skarmouth, where everyone knew each other, where his friends were, where he felt safe and _known_. There was nothing terrible enough to make him want to leave.

The fact that Beech and Gabe found something somehow _wrong_ deeply unsettled him. Tommy felt suddenly very cold, and grabbed for his shirt. The fabric was warmed by the sun.

Tommy felt stupid, too, because he realized that while they’d been dreaming of leaving, he’d been dreaming of finding glory _here_ in the Scorpio Races.

“Maybe we can go together,” Beech said to Gabe.

The suggestion was lofty, but Tommy’s dread swerved into a sudden, fierce ferocity at the thought of Gabe leaving with _Beech_. In his mind’s eye, he watched them board a boat together, smiling at one another. They waved to Tommy and sailed off into the sunset, disappearing forever. 

Tommy didn’t want to hear Gabe give an answer. He suddenly didn’t care about how stupid his own dream sounded.

“Well I’ll be racing in the Scorpio Races once I’m of age,” he said, staring hard at the wooden planks at his feet. “You can’t leave till I win.”

“Then we’ll _never_ leave,” said Beech, and the trace of humor in his voice filled Tommy with a strange kind of relief, like it somehow made everything a bit less real.

Tommy looked over at Gabe, ready to meet his gaze with a grin, but was surprised to find Gabe unsmiling.

Instead, it was that same strange apprehension he'd found in Gabe’s eyes when he’d been holding his hands out to Beech and Tommy from the dock, ready to pull them from the water moments before.

“But the Scorpio Races are dangerous,” Gabe said. “People get _eaten.”_

Tommy frowned. It was not as if he had never shared his dreams to race in the Scorpio Races with Gabe. In fact, Gabe was the person he’d probably talked to about it most, seeing as Gabe was the person he told the most things. He’d made small comments like this before, but never as if he was arguing against it, like he appeared to be now.

Gabe knew how much Tommy loved riding land horses, how much he loved the speed and the exhilaration of the chase, of competition, of the wind in his face. The thought of riding a water horse, of racing that fast, was almost dizzying.

Tommy also knew that Gabe’s parents were not fans of the races, how his father, specifically, never had anything good to say about them. Gabe had never seen the races, had only ever been to the Scorpio Festival _one time_ when his mother felt a spark of wildness in her just last year.

It shouldn’t have made Gabe _afraid._

Besides, Tommy would practice. He would be good enough.

He had said as much, but Gabe hardly looked comforted. Tommy supposed he should have been touched at his friend’s worry, but instead he just felt annoyed at his lack of confidence in him.

Beech was no help.

“My mum holds the sign-ups for the games,” he said. “You should hear some of her stories. It’s not just getting eaten, it’s getting trampled, torn apart-”

“Okay,” Tommy said quickly, because this was not helping and Gabe’s face was growing more closed off.  

“Just saying,” said Beech.

“It’ll be a few years yet before I can race,” said Tommy. “I’ll be ready.”

“Just make sure you win quickly,” Beech said. “Then we’ll be ready to go.”

Tommy wasn’t sure if that included him, and if he wanted it to or not.

“Sure,” Tommy said. Gabe stayed quiet.

“And- fine,” said Beech, heaving a heavy sigh. “I can’t swim. Dad tried teaching me, but it never lasted.” His voice sounded slightly bitter, like he thought his father should have tried harder.

“I knew it,” Tommy said, but his voice lacked any of its usual triumph. “You should know, if you want to ride a boat, it’s useful to know how to swim.”

Beech frowned. “Isn’t the point of riding a boat to _avoid_ swimming?”

Tommy’s lip quirked. “Not if you sink.”

“Ah, well,” Beech said, leaning back on the heels of his hands and tipping his face toward the sun. The tips of his hair were dry. “We’ll probably all just get eaten by water horses anyway, so what’s the point?”

Tommy laughed quietly, then flicked his eyes back to Gabe. He was looking back at him without so much as a smile.  

“It won’t be for a while yet,” said Tommy, a strange discomfort niggling at him all of the sudden.

“Sure,” said Gabe, and he looked back at the sea, pressing his lips together. The day had turned his freckles brown and the sun burned his hair such a bright, brilliant orange it almost hurt Tommy to look at it.

“Hey Tom,” said Beech. When Tommy looked around at him, imprints of the sunlight blocked his vision of Beech’s face. “Play something on your pipes again, yeah? I’m tired of talking.”

Tommy’s heart clenched. His pipes! If they’d fallen out in the ocean, he’d never forgive himself. His grandfather had made them for him last Christmas, his name was carved on them and everything-

His fingers touched upon them in his pocket, and his chest fell back in on himself in relief. Except, as he pulled it into the dry air, he discovered that the wood was soft and damp.

“Oh,” he said out loud, feeling an acute sense of sorrow. Even if he left them to dry, they probably wouldn’t ever sound the same.

“Are they ruined?” asked Beech. Gabe looked over at the question.

“No,” Tommy said quickly, lying, because he felt silly and dumb for having jumped into the water with them in his pocket. “Probably just need to dry.” He put them down in the sun beside him, avoiding his friends’ eyes. “They might sound a bit different, though,” he couldn’t help adding. He had the sudden urge to go home, away from the dock and from his friends.

Gabe’s eyes were sad when Tommy glanced at him again. He’d always understood Tommy’s love of music, at least.

 

 

 

GABE

A hideous swell of fury spins through Gabe like a hurricane.

“Dove?” he says, staring. “ _Dove?_ ”

“Er- that’s what the board says,” says Beech, looking between him and the chalkboard hanging in his father’s butcher shop.

“Well,” Gabe says, letting out a huff of a laugh that has anything but humor in it. “It really was nice knowing her, wasn’t it?"

“Gabe,” Tommy says in a low voice that only makes Gabe angrier.

Gabe looks at him. “What, Tommy? She’s signed up for a water horse race with her _land pony._ ” He rounds on Beech again. “Isn’t there some rule against this?”

Beech blinks. “Uh- ”

“She’s only doing this to make me stay here longer,” Gabe says though his teeth. “She’s never shown any real interest in racing before this. If she’d just let me _leave,_ I could send her and Finn money sooner. She’s not going to win this.”

“You don’t know-” Beech tries.

“Beech,” Tommy says now, and through his anger Gabe is able to be grateful enough that Tommy, unlike Beech, knows when to bullshit him and when not to. Which, generally, is never.

Gabe wants to punch something. He wants to go back in time and deck whoever it was that invented these hideous races in the first place.

“Gabe,” Tommy says, looking at Gabe, seeking to placate him. “I’ll be out there too, I’ll make sure-”

Because that makes him feel so much better. Gabe feels another terrible laugh bubble out of him. “What is everyone’s obsession with racing these horses? They _kill_ us. They killed our parents, and Puck still-” He cuts himself off. 

“It’s-” Tommy starts, and he’s explained it to Gabe before. Something about the speed and the wind in his face, the exhilaration, the sensation of feeling _alive._

Why did the sensation of feeling alive have to come at the cost of trying to survive a gruesome death? _Why_ , Gabe thought furiously, couldn’t he just ride a roller coaster once they got to the mainland?

“I hate this island,” Gabe says quietly, hands clasped into fists at his sides. His fingernails cut into his palms.

Sometimes he feels it all at once, this malice for Thisby. For the water horses and the Scorpio races, for his parents’ deaths, for the fish – the _fish_ , for everyone knowing everything, for Benjamin Malvern’s underhanded warnings that they would lose their house, for the house itself, empty and dirty and sad, for Puck being too rash and wild and Finn being too young and sweet, for Beech always smelling of raw meat and blood, for the church and the fact that Tommy has had one foot out the door all this time, waiting-

He wants to leave right now. He wants to walk to the docks and board a boat and never return. He wants it so badly his lungs feel as if they may just explode out of his chest.

A hand lands on his shoulder, gentle. Always gentle.

“Gabe,” says Tommy’s voice. “We’re going to leave,” he continues, because he’s always, somehow, been able to read Gabe’s mind. “I promise. That we can promise.”

“Yeah, mate,” Beech adds softly, and Gabe feels an unexpected ping of affection for him. Even though Tommy and Gabe have always been TommyandGabe, Beech has always been loyal, he’s always been there even though he could have backed out, he could have left sooner, he could have done whatever he wanted, but he stayed. 

Gabe nods, eyes falling to the ground, floorboards scuffed and stained from years of wet shoes treading upon them. He wishes things didn’t have to be this way, but there’s nothing he could ever do except stay. Stay and make money for Finn and Puck to live in that house for the rest of all of their lives. But he can’t anymore. He cannot. He promised himself, he promised Tommy. And Beech. They’ve already stayed on Thisby far longer than they planned to.

Gabe nods again, and Tommy and Beech nod back, and they keep going.  

 

 

TOMMY

 

The wind slapped at Tommy’s bare face. His fingers were so cold they were past the point of pain, but he couldn’t help think that he’d tied away his water horse too soon.

The air was thick with fog. Tommy could hardly see five yards in front of him, never mind any sort of racing distance. Some of the trees had lost their leaves early this year and naked, spindly branches stretched out at him from the mist. He was rounding the cliff up the beach and if he didn’t know better, if he couldn’t traverse Thisby with his eyes closed, a few steps off the side of the trail and he’d be pitched right off the side into the hidden rocks below.

Tommy closed his eyes for a moment, ears stinging in the wind, as he rounded the sharpest curve of the cliff.  The icy air licked at his scalp through his hair, sneaking through the threads in his trousers. He could hardly feel his feet. He shouldn’t have ended his training so early today. What would he _do_ with the rest of his afternoon? Dread colder than the wind began to creep into the innermost caverns of his mind, of his chest, and he finally realized he was shivering. 

_It is not a man of a healthy mine that races atop flesh-eating water horses._

Tommy heard someone say this once, at a Scorpio Festival some year in the past, and it had been coming back to him lately. He couldn’t, for the life of him, place it in context, but it didn’t really matter. The context was Thisby.

 _That’s not true,_ he remembered thinking at the time. _I have a perfectly healthy mind, and I want to race._

Tommy wanted to go back in time and laugh in his younger self’s face from his place on top of his water horse.

He was finally eighteen, finally old enough to compete in the Scorpio Races. After all these years of dreaming. Tommy wanted to win so desperately he might have become more bloodthirsty than his horse.

He _would_ win the races. He would win the money and leave and never come back.

The fog had caused dangerous riding conditions today, not that there was ever a particularly _safe_ time to be riding a water horce. And he shouldn’t have even considered going the speeds he had gone today.  

Tommy kept his eyes closed, pretending the fierce wind against his face was almost as sharp as the air rushing past him – _through_ him – as he rode his water horse along the beach. The faster he went, the harder he rode, the sharper and colder the air in his face, the more his muscles ached and his throat burned from panting - the better.

Tommy felt so alive when he raced. He felt like nothing at all.

The only time he didn’t mind being on the ground was when he dismounted his horse and it was as if the earth didn’t exist beneath him. He felt weightless, as if his body was a dream.  

His feet were numb but he could feel the solid ground beneath them as he trudged up the cliff. He thought he heard a shout somewhere ahead of him. Thisby was coming alive again. He should have started earlier that morning to get an extra hour or two in; Sunday mornings were when he could be perfectly, blessedly alone on the beach and ride to his heart’s content with all the space the sand had to provide. it wasn’t until the afternoon that people started showing up.

Tommy had always been a social creature, but he wasn’t exactly keen on people right now. And yet, it was _them_ who had taken issue with him first.

“Tom?” said a voice in front of him, jerking him back to the present. Tommy opened his eyes as a hand grabbed his arm. “Tommy!”

He blinked. A familiar, freckled face came into focus in front of him, red hair blowing around his face. Brown eyes were scowling at him, and Tommy felt an involuntary jolt.

“Tommy, why are you walking around with your eyes closed? This is a cliff, you know!” said Gabe, squeezing his arm, and Tommy sucked in a breath.

“I was just-” Tommy started, but he didn’t exactly know what he was doing.

“You were being an idiot, is what you were doing,” said Gabe. He let go of Tommy’s arm and Tommy felt like he could breathe again before a bolt of deep anger flashed through him.

His eyes narrowed into a glare before he began to walk again, leaving Gabe a step behind. “What do you care, if you think I’m just an idiot?”

Tommy had never said a single word, not a _single word,_ and somehow they all knew, like they’d sapped it from his brain, drank it from his open eyes.

He heard Gabe huff through his nose as he caught up beside him.

And the thing was, _they_ had never said a word either, and yet Tommy knew they knew.

“Where have you been?” Gabe asked – demanded - and Tommy’s anger wedged deeper.

“You know where I’ve been,” said Tommy, keeping his eyes focused on what he could see of the path in front of him. “I’ve been training for the Scorpio Races.”

“So you’re really doing that?”

Tommy paused so suddenly that Gabe nearly stumbled. Gabe looked back at Tommy, confused.

Tommy looked back at him, eyes dark. “Yes.”

He knew his dreams of riding in the Scorpio Races had been a child’s dream before. They were nothing real, nothing more than a love of galloping around on his land pony. Now, the monster beneath him, come to life from his childhood dream, a monster that would tear his flesh off without a second thought, was the only thing that mattered to him. He _needed_ to race, it wasn’t a choice.

The monster he rode on was a reprieve from the newer monsters that inhabited his head.

Gabe scowled again. “You’ll get yourself killed, you know.” He said it like Tommy deserved it and Tommy rather supposed he did.

“Sure,” said Tommy, digging his hands, stiff with cold, into his pockets. “And again, _what do you care?_ ”

Gabe’s frown deepened. “What do you mean, what do I care?”

“ _Why_ do you care?” Tommy asked again. “No one else does, if you haven’t noticed.”

Gabe paused for the barest of seconds, and beneath all of his layers of anger Tommy felt the keen, unspeakable humiliation that he’d kept buried these past few weeks reach up and poke against the most sensitive part of his psyche with one thin tip of a finger.

His lungs drained of air. He wouldn’t- he _couldn’t -_ discuss this with Gabe.

He turned around and started walking again.

“Tommy- Tom, wait,” he heard, and Gabe caught up with him again, but Tommy was walking fast. His skin was suddenly very hot beneath his coat and the wind, and he wanted to be anywhere but around Gabe Connolly.

“Yes, I care,” said Gabe. A breath. “You’re my friend, of course I care.”

 _You’re my friend._ A lot of people had been his friends.

“Beech is worried about you, too,” he went on.

“Really?” Tommy said, despite himself. “How come I haven’t seen him, then?”

“You’ve been on your horse nonstop!” said Gabe. “What do you expect us to do, fling ourselves into the path of one of those beasts to get your attention?”

“So it’s my fault you’ve been avoiding me,” said Tommy, the sting of it piercing where Tommy had thought there was nothing left to pierce. Of course it was his fault, every blasted cruelty come his way was _his_ fault.

“You’ve been avoiding us, too!” said Gabe.

Tommy halted again, turning to look at Gabe full in the face. “Yes, I have! I have been avoiding you! Because I am the adulteress and this island wants to stone me, so _I’m terribly sorry_ for thinking you may feel the same way.”

Gabe blinked, and Tommy glared harder. “John 8. I do still know my Bible, Thisby beat that into me if nothing else.”

Gabe frowned again. “I don’t feel that way- how could you _think_ \- Tom, you’re my best friend, I-”

He cut himself off, and Tommy felt something inside of his burn. His stupid, traitorous heart beat hard against his ribs.

He’d been afraid. He’d been so, terribly afraid of this moment. The wind stung against the back of his neck.

It was something he’d only just come to terms with himself before the island unleashed its judgement upon him. Nothing overt, _never_ overt, just sideways glances and too-long stares, abrupt silences when he walked into a room. Complete silences from Thisby’s chattiest. The masterful way people knew how to watch from the corner of their eyes when he sat next to Gabe, or Beech, a grown man three times his age, even his own _brothers_. Tommy had never quite realized how the church doors that led to God were carved and nailed by men, and so, finally, he stopped passing through them. 

“ _Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her,”_ Gabe quoted quietly. He knew the verses as well as Tommy did, unconditional love and forgiveness beaten into them every single Sunday since the day were born. Until it wasn’t. Gabe looked up and met his eyes. “I wouldn’t ever, Tom,” he said softly, just over the howl of the wind.

For the space of a moment the words hung between them, in front of Tommy, but before the wind could sweep them away- he grasped them.

All the tension bled out of his shoulders, and a relief so intense washed over him he could have collapsed to the ground and rolled right off that cliff anyway. The relief was so encompassing he actually felt his eyes begin to prickle.

He looked away from Gabe.

He swallowed. “Thanks.”

“Nothing to thank me for,” said Gabe, and Tommy looked up. There was Gabe and the ground and the fog and nothing else, but suddenly the world felt just a bit easier to breathe in again.

There was silence for a moment, and then Gabe asked, “Are you still going to race?”

Tommy looked at him. “Of course I am.” It was hardly a question, and Gabe’s expression remained blank as he said it, but there was something _there_ that Tommy had a feeling he was missing, so he said, “I’m still going to race.” He curled his hands into fists into his pockets. “And if I win, we’ll use the money to leave.”

Gabe’s eyebrows shot up, startled. “Leave?”

“Yeah,” said Tommy. “Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?”

“Yeah, but you-” Gabe cut himself off. Tommy had never wanted to leave. Until he did. “Okay,” he said.

“Okay,” said Tommy.

They started walking again, wind hard as ever. Suddenly Gabe turned and punched him in the arm, hard and gentle. “Just don’t go getting yourself killed, idiot.”

“I’m not, _idiot,”_ said Tommy, and they were smiling.

_

Tommy didn’t win that first year.

But he did survive.

Gabe was wide-eyed and white-faced when he found him, pushing through the crowd as Tommy dismounted his water horse. Tommy hadn’t won, but his head was spinning and adrenaline was pumping through his veins and his heart was beating at a million miles an hour. His skin was sticky and clammy from the damp beach wind, and he was covered in sand. It was even inside his ears.

“I came in twelfth place,” he said, his entire body numb.

“You _lived_ ,” Gabe breathed, and threw his arms around him.

Tommy’s entire head turned to static.

Then Gabe was pulled backward, and Beech was there, red-cheeked with excitement.

“Out of the way, Gabe, you sentimental prick. You finished!” he said, clapping Tommy on the back. “Did you _see_ the way Simmons was slaughtered out there? God, Tommy, I thought that was you for a second!” He patted Tommy on the back a second time, breathing hard, alight with what Tommy realized was nervous energy.

Tommy had seen the smears of blood in the sand as he’d ridden through them, but he didn’t want to think about that now – ever – and instead turned it out of his mind and smiled, heart still pounding away. “Next year will have to be the year, then.”

“Next year,” Gabe echoed faintly, looking at him.

This had been the first games Gabe had come to, seeing as now he was eighteen and his parents couldn’t stop him, which explained for the shock. But this was not Beech’s first, whose mother practically ran it, which explained the thrill.

 “Of course,” said Beech. He put his hands on both of their shoulders. “A man never stops until he’s won, right?” He grinned. “Or, you know, killed.”

 

 

GABE

 

“We’re going to the Scorpio Festival and we’re getting drunk,” Tommy had said two hours ago, reading Gabe’s mind. Tommy was always a step ahead of him.

They sit in the Black-Eyed Girl, the air smoky and loud and dim, tucked away in a corner booth, in the midst of the festivities yet just far enough separated from them. They’ve had three drinks each and Tommy sits across from him, eyes sparkling and warm and lips red and soft and pretty.

Tommy’s feet are hooked around the backs of his ankles beneath the table, a comfortable weight tucked away in the shadows. He’s just told another joke and Gabe is laughing and laughing, and he’s felt looser than he has in weeks and weeks and weeks.

“And when we get to the mainland,” Tommy says, “we’re going to find an actual _real_ place to live, not some damn closet like I live in now-”

An old spark of excitement reignites in Gabe’s chest. He would never tell Tommy how many times he’s imagined their own flat together. He splays his hand out on the table in front of him. “With an actual kitchen instead of a cupboard,” he says.

“Maybe then I can actually cook more than one damn piece of bacon at a time,” Tommy says. Gabe laughs again, and Tommy grins.  

“We’ll make a whole damn feast and invite Beech over and impress the living shit out of him,” Gabe keeps going, but Tommy’s gaze has shifted to something less genuine and he’s smiling at someone behind him, but before Gabe can look, he hears her voice instead.

“Gabe.”

His euphoria immediately dies down, because Puck is standing there, scowling and arms crossed and red hair bleeding into the haze. Of course she would find him now, tonight, of all evenings, when he’s not goddamn worrying for once.

But he’s not going to let that ruin his entire mood.

“Oh, Puck,” he says, a smile still on the edge of his lips.

“Yes, oh, Puck,” she says. She’s annoyed, because of course she is.

“I can’t believe you’re riding in the races,” Tommy says, joining the conversation because that’s just what he does. “Saw you that first day. First girl ever.” He lifts up his drink and winks, eyes so delicate and perfect. “Here’s to us.”

Gabe feels a small spike of annoyance. He keeps his tone light, but kicks at Tommy’s feet beneath the table. “Don’t encourage her.”

“You’re drunk.” Puck’s voice is hard.

Gabe’s annoyance spikes higher. It’s none of her damn business how much he drinks _._ His eyes involuntarily flicker to Tommy again and at the multiple glasses between them. “Don’t be stupid, Kate. It’s just one drink.”

“Dad didn’t want you to drink,” she says, and her voice wavers, just slightly. “You told him you wouldn’t!”

Immediately, Gabe feels his own voice harden. His eyes cut to her. “You’re being hysterical.”

But’s she’s regained her composure, and if anything, she’s infuriatingly calm. “I need to talk to you.”

“Okay.” He doesn’t want to talk to her. He’s been worried every day about her racing but he doesn’t want to speak another word to her. He can feel Tommy’s eyes on him. He knows about the house. He knows everything.  

Puck leans over, lowers her voice. “Privately.”

His annoyance pushes into frustration. He raises his eyebrows, forces himself to look careless instead, and lifts up a hand. “There isn’t really a place to be private here. Can’t it hold?”

Puck leans over and grabs his arm. “No. Not anymore. I need to talk now.”

She pulls him to his feet, and the room wavers just slightly, but like his frustration, he doesn’t let it show. He glances back at Tommy, whose eyebrows are raised. “I guess I’m going, Tommy. I’ll be back.”

Tommy grins. “You show him, Puck!” He punches his first to the air and winks at Gabe just before he turns, and Gabe knows he’s entirely on Gabe’s side.

Puck’s lips press into a tight, straight line as she leads him toward the back of the pub.

-

Puck’s words echo in his mind as he slides back into the booth ten minutes later.

She’d found out about Benjamin Malvern taking the house, of course she did. It was only a matter of time. Gabe would have been alarmed at just how indifferent he’d felt when the words slipped from her mouth, but he was so tired.

_“We deserved to be told, Gabriel!”_

_“What good would it do? You two weren’t going to make any more money. What do you think I’ve been doing all these nights? I’m doing my best.”_

_“And then you’re leaving.”_

Yes, he was leaving, he was finally, finally leaving.

 _“A person can only try so hard,”_ he’d said, because it was true. There came a point after a person tried and tried and tried until they just couldn’t anymore. _“I did my best.”_ He _did._

Puck’s voice had been cold. _“That’s not good enough.”_

_That’s not good enough._

Of course it wasn’t. Of course it fucking wasn’t. If his best was good enough, they wouldn’t be losing their house, they wouldn’t be on the brink of starving, Puck wouldn’t be in the Scorpio Races and neither would Tommy, Finn would be a normal happy kid, and Gabe would be on the mainland by now and his parents wouldn’t be dead in the ground.

Tommy keeps his face carefully neutral as he looks at him, but his concern is evident from the delicate downturn of his lips.

He wraps an ankle around Gabe’s beneath the table.

“She knows Malvern’s taking the house,” Gabe says in a flat voice.

Tommy nods, just slightly, because he’d been expecting it too. “Do you want to go?”

Gabe considers it for half of a second, but leaving means going home and letting the words run rampant in his mind without alcohol, while here he could drown them out to his heart’s content.

_That’s not good enough._

Either way, he’ll find himself in Tommy’s arms by the end of the night.

“No,” he says, and grabs the rest of Tommy’s glass and downs it. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Let’s stay.”

 

 

TOMMY

 

Tommy had participated in every Scorpio Race for the last four years

“Seriously, mate?” said Beech, setting his pint glass down on the table with a thunk. He had smears of blood on his shirt, as he often did, because his mother never washed his clothes quickly enough to maintain any clean ones. “You _really_ think you’ll win this time?”

“I’ll never know unless I try.” Tommy sipped his own drink. They sat in a booth at the back of the Black-Eyed Girl. It was early afternoon and people had only just begun to trickle in from work; stools still sat empty at the bar, the air was still semi-fresh.

Beech snorted. “The only one that ever bets on you is Gabe, and that’s only because he has half a brain.”

Tommy smirked around the rim of his glass. “It’s because _he’s_ a good friend.”

“If the price of being a good friend is half my earnings every year, I’ll pass,” said Beech. “Besides, everyone knows the good money’s with Sean Kendrick.”

“Sean Kendrick is overrated.”

They both looked up at Gabe’s voice, who grinned at them before shoving his way into Tommy’s side of the booth. He always arrived last, damp and breathless from being at out on the boats all day with his father, hair messy and windswept and falling into his eyes. Tommy’s fingers twitched on the chipped surface of the table.

Gabe set his glass on the table and shoved his coat off – arm bumping Tommy’s once, twice – before taking a long sip. He only ever had one drink, because his father didn’t like him drinking, and he didn’t care to go home reeking of alcohol even though “you’re twenty three years old, Gabe, my god."

“This is why he’s my best mate and you’re…you,” Tommy said, smirking at Beech, raising an eyebrow.

“You do realize that’s mainland money you’re wasting on this prick, right?” Beech said to Gabe.

“I don’t put my entire savings on him, I’m not _that_ hopeful,” said Gabe.

“If that wasn’t such an economic move, I might be annoyed about it,” Tommy said, nudging him.

Gabe laughed into his glass, eyes crinkling beneath his scraggy bangs. Tommy looked back at Beech.

Beech looked contemplative. “When do you think you’ll have enough?” he asked, leaning over the table slightly. His own black hair fell just above his thick, dark eyebrows. “My dad doesn’t pay me nearly what I deserve for how many customers I butcher for, but I’ve got a lot stashed.”

“After the races,” Gabe said, leaning back. “Once Tommy wins, I’ll triple my money and we’ll head straight for the mainland.”

“I’m _serious,_ Gabe.”

“So am I.” Gabe took a long sip of his drink. “After the races. Whether Tommy wins or not.”

“Just so long as I live,” Tommy said.

“Cheaper for us if you don’t,” said Beech.

Gabe cast a glance at him. “All _three_ of us,” he said, “after the races. This year.”

“Well okay,” said Beech. “This year.”

Tommy held his glass up, and they clinked them all together.

He wasn’t in as much of a fury to get off the island as he had been several years ago, and while he wasn’t the most popular competitor in the Scorpio Races, he did have a few loyal bets placed on him now, and more importantly, he’d carved a place for himself there. He was a regular, and he finished every year, even if it wasn’t first. He hadn’t died yet.

He had cooled down and so had the people around him, but still- there were looks thrown his way, there were glances that lasted a bit too long. Tommy knew it wasn’t because he was one of the most well-known racers on the island, now.

Not that he did it for the prestige. No one was stupid enough to do it for that, except maybe Mutt Malvern. No, like most racers, he came back for the thrill- of freezing air on his face and wet sand in his boots and the possibility that death was, literally, beneath his fingertips.

It was sad to think this could be his last year.  

The pub was crowded now, the air stuffy and voices loud and angry and jolly and letting off steam from a long work day. A band was starting up, and a guy with curly blonde hair was standing on the stool, calling for a fiddler.

He loved racing his water horse, but it was quite possible that Tommy Falk loved music more.

As if he was reading his mind – or perhaps, really, because he just knew Tommy that well – Gabe pulled the glass from Tommy’s hand and said, “What are you waiting for, go up there.” He nodded to the front, and then he smiled, bangs swept away from his eyes this time, warm and brown as dark caramel.

Tommy’s pulse stuttered in his veins, just slightly, just for a moment. But his heart was used to this.

He felt the grin growing over his own face, and started moving so Gabe could let him out of the booth. 

On the mainland there may not be waterhorse racing, but there would certainly be other horses he could ride, and there would music, _real shows,_ and there would be himself, and Beech, and Gabe.

Curly-haired-guy tossed him the fiddle, and it fit into his hands easily as the others began to play. He’d never heard the song before, but it was easy to find his place as his fingers slotted themselves on the strings with no hesitation.  

_There would be Gabe, there would be Gabe, there would be Gabe…._

GABE

It’s something Gabe knows, has known forever – has experienced _before_ – but like everything, it’s not until it actually happens that it actually feels real.

A person doesn’t have to be a participant in the Scorpio Races to fall victim to a water horse.

It was lucky to a degree of fatefulness that he and Tommy had been out driving Tommy’s dad’s car. It was a relaxing thing to do, sometimes, when they had an afternoon off, when the sun was just peeking through the clouds enough to make everything the tiniest bit more colorful. They’d roll down their windows even though it was too cold, and turn on the ancient radio just a little bit too loud. They’d talk about nothing that mattered and they’d make each other laugh, and sometimes Tommy would reach over and touch Gabe’s hair, just because he “liked the way the wind made it fluffier.” On those days, the island felt a lot more open and a little less suffocating.

It was one of those afternoons, bleeding into night, and Gabe felt loose and cheerful from laughter as the raindrops began to dot the windshield. They both saw it at the same time.

“Puck and Finn,” Gabe said, pushing himself up in his seat. He squinted into the dusk, suddenly aware of all of their surroundings. He hadn’t realized it’d been getting foggy.

Tommy had already hit the gas, turning onto the first road to Gabe’s house.

A waterhorse could destroy this car. And then it would destroy them. But better to try than let it destroy Puck and Finn.

Gabe almost thinks it’s too late, his heart nearly clawing its way up his throat as they approach their tiny house. But then they see the waterhorse going the other way, no limbs or blood to be seen, and Gabe heaves a sign so enormous he thinks he could pass out with relief.

His mother and father were one thing. And even though he wanted to leave the island, he didn’t want to go without the knowledge that Puck and Finn were alive and well (though that may not be the case for Puck in a few weeks’ time, but he didn’t let that thought cross his mind at that particular moment).

When he finds them, of course Puck insists on bringing Dove, and Tommy drives them at a snail’s crawl to the only place close enough and safe enough.

“Shit,” says Beech, opening his door, and Peg Gratton wastes no time in ushering them all inside, ordering Beech to escort Puck to the stables to stash Dove away.

Gabe is grateful when Tommy starts tossing around a sack of beans, making Beech laugh, and Puck and Finn. He feels his body loosen again, the air lightening with their laugher and as he discusses the sleeping arrangements with Peg, he wishes he could volunteer himself to sleep beside Tommy.

“Are you-” Gabe starts, though he’s tried before and he knows it’s a hopeless question. But tonight shook him up and the thought of Puck near another water horse nearly makes him ill. “Are you sure we can’t take her out of the race?”

Peg looks up from her stew, eyes sympathetic in a way that makes Gabe regret having asked the question at all. “Not any by any rules of ours, you know that,” she says, because she’s told him before.

There’s a knock at the door frame, and they both turn around. By the look on Tommy’s face, Gabe knows he’s heard them, and it makes him feel even stupider for some reason. Like a kid trying to get his way.

“Food’s ready.” Peg heaves the giant pot off the stove with a grunt.

Dinner is mostly silent, which is fine, because Gabe doesn’t have much to say anyway. But the room is warm and the food is mostly decent, and Gabe realizes that all the people most important in the world to him are sitting at the table, and it feels almost strange. Like the chances of it ever happening again are slim, and he doesn’t want to think about why. Tommy’s knee sits pressed against his beneath the table.

He’s sleeping with Puck, even though he knows she’ll ask questions he won’t want to answer. But before he can disappear into Beech’s room, Tommy tugs him into the tiny front hall, away from everyone else as they get ready for bed.

Before Gabe can say anything, Tommy presses a kiss against his lips, and Gabe immediately feels something inside of him loosen, not having realized how much he’d needed that. Even after these last few years, Tommy was so much better at this stuff than he was, and probably always would be. Lucky for Gabe, Tommy didn’t seem to care all too much.

“Doing alright?” Tommy asks quietly once he pulls away. He pushes Gabe’s hair back from his forehead.

Gabe shrugs. Cold air seeps through the edges around the door and he can feel it through his sweater. “Dunno. You?”

Tommy shrugs back. “Not really as much for me to worry about, is there?” Which Gabe interprets as, _my answer to that question depends on your answer._

“Thanks for bringing us all here,” Gabe says, because there’s not much other reassurance he can give, except that he’s relieved they’re all there, safe, for one night at least. “Thanks for distracting Puck and Finn tonight.”

“Sure,” Tommy says, shrugging a second time, and he looks perfect and soft and pretty in the low light.

Gabe reaches up to kiss him again, and then Tommy tells him goodnight, and when he finds himself laying in Beech’s bed beside Puck and faced with her questions about why he wants to leave the island, he tells her all the reasons, and in his head he adds _Tommy, Tommy, Tommy._

TOMMY

The Scorpio Races were different that year.

They were different every year, but this year, his fifth, brought some tide of _change_ with them.

Or maybe it was all in Tommy’s head.

The fingers trying to sneak their way beneath the waistband of his trousers were very certainly _real,_ however.

Tommy grinned against the lips on his, reaching down to guide the hand back up, to tangle their hands together, messily, because this whole thing was very, delightfully, messy. “Cheeky,” he said, and pressed another kiss against slightly rough, very wet, lips.

There was an answering whine against his mouth that twisted into breathy laughter, and Tommy was kissed again, stubble scratching his cheek.

“Can’t help that you’re so fuckin’ pretty.” His voice was rough, and Tommy felt a sweet jolt of pleasure blossom beneath his skin at the compliment.

He wanted to say something, maybe thank him, and started to pull away, but Ren’s lips followed, pressing more firmly against his. Tommy gasped for air before kissing him back.

It was their third meeting like this, since they met a week ago. Ren had come from the mainland to see the races, and as fate would have it, Tommy was standing on the docks when his ship came in, waiting for Gabe to get in from the workday.

Ren was short, and broad, with a muscular chest and arms that were on the hairier side, and Tommy wouldn’t have given him a second thought – he’d hardly given him a first one – if Ren hadn’t walked right up to him.   

“Hiya,” he’d said, smiling, stubble dusting his cheeks and damp, dark hair whipping around his head in the wind.

“Welcome,” Tommy had said back. He was sitting on the edge of one a wooden beam, arms crossed, but he smiled back.

“So you’re from around here,” Ren had said. “I’m here for the races.”

“I’m in the races.” Tommy let his smile slip into a full-on grin. It was something he was proud of, now- he was a regular, and even though he’d never come in first, or second, or even third ( _almost,_ last year), he’d made a name for himself.

Ren grinned back. “Perfect. I have to catch my room at the inn, but maybe you could show me around? Is there a pub we can meet up at?”

It was fast, and forward, but Tommy would learn quickly that that was Ren’s style. And the races only lasted so long before visitors went home.

And Tommy was never one to turn someone away. “Sure thing.”

Ren was walking away, making plans to meet at the Black Eyed Girl later that evening with him, when Gabe walked up to him.

“Who was that?” he asked, looking at Tommy.

Tommy shrugged, turning to him. Gabe’s cheeks were chapped pink from the harsh ocean wind, coat wet and hanging from his thin shoulders. Something in Tommy’s chest tightened at the sight.

“Just a visitor,” he said. “Wanted to join us at the pub tonight.”

“Oh,” said Gabe, and he looked back at Ren’s figure retreated down the misty dock. “Okay.”

 

-

 

Gabe had left first that night, and Beech not long after. That’s what happened when you were an adult with early morning work.

And Tommy had to go home too, because he had to train for the races in the morning, but Ren had asked him to help him find his inn, because he couldn’t remember.

Tommy didn’t let Ren bring him into his room that night, but he did let him kiss him in the dark alleyway between the inn and the shop beside it, orange lamplight glinting off the slick cobblestone. His mouth was wet and tasted of alcohol and smoke. Tommy had kissed a few girls in his youth, and one boy, another visitor during race time, two years before, but far more innocent than this.

It had been so long, and Tommy came alive, hands shaking until they weren’t, under Ren’s lips.

 

-

 

“What’s the point of racing if you just know Sean Kendrick is going to win like he has every year?”

“There’s always still a chance. I hold on to that.”

“A tiny chance.”

“I thought you were supposed to be my best friend.”

“I am your best friend.” Gabe was grinning at him, and the sun was shining after so many days of rain that it was as if the world was being revealed again in sharp, dazzling color. “Which means I tell you the truth, even when you don’t want to hear it.”

Tommy rolled his eyes. They were coming upon town, going to the bakery after a long week of hard work, to treat themselves. It was a Saturday, and the sun made Gabe’s hair look like fire.

“That’s stupid,” Tommy said. “You should be telling me how great I am. All the things I’m good at.” He smiled, showing off his teeth; it was the way he smiled at the girls at the bakery so they gave him free treats.

Gabe looked at him for the space of a second before he ducked his head, hair falling in front of his eyes. Tommy wanted to lift his hand and brush it back.

“You’re good at being a pain in the ass.”

“High praise, coming from you.”

Gabe raised his head and met his eyes again, smile bright and surprisingly soft. Then, gently, fleetingly, probably mistakenly, his hand brushed the back of Tommy’s, and Tommy’s breath caught in his throat.

“Hiya Tommy, Gabe.”

Tommy had hardly begun breathing again, but all he could thing was _not now, not now, not now._

Ren, smiling, stubble thicker than it had been two days before but hair a bit cleaner, was crossing the street toward them.

“Hi Ren,” Tommy said, forcing on a new grin for him.

“Had fun the other night,” he said, and clapped a large hand on Tommy’s arm. He looked between the both of them. “We should do it again, how about tonight?”

“Sure,” said Gabe.

“Only a few days before the big race, want to get as much fun in as possible,” Ren said. 

“Of course,” said Tommy.

“Well, I’ll see you boys later, then,” Ren said. He looked at Tommy, straight in the eye, and winked before he walked off.

He was halfway down the street, whistling some joyful tune, before Gabe said, “What was that about?”

Gabe looked at him. “He- he just-” His eyes were less soft than they had been moments before. Tommy closed his mouth and looked away, squinting at the sky, as if there was something to see there. “Nothing.”

A beat passed, just a brief one. “Okay.”

They continued on to the bakery, quiet, and when they got there, Tommy’s pretty smile was only enough to get them one free treat, not two. Gabe wouldn’t take it when Tommy tried to give it to him.

“Stubborn,” Tommy muttered, biting into the cinnamon twist. Sweetness filled his mouth as he watched Gabe buy his own.

 

-

The second time, Tommy let Ren bring him into his room at the inn.

 

-

The third time, Tommy brought Ren to his own little flat.

He’d only just started renting it a few months before, and it was hardly bigger than a broom shed, but it was his.

It was _his_ and he had a guy over, and they were kissing and it felt good. It was also strangely intimate, but Tommy felt like he had more control here. When Ren had slipped his hand into his pants at his room at the inn, Tommy had felt more hesitant shying away, like he didn’t have the right to be shy about it. 

But they’d only known each other a week, and Ren would be leaving, and Tommy didn’t want to do that, not with someone he barely knew. Kissing was nice, it unwound something coiled tight within him, but he didn’t even know Ren’s last name.

The thought sobered him slightly, and Ren must have felt it.

“You cool down so fast,” he said, breath hot on Tommy’s face. “You’re like a woman.” And then he bit down on Tommy’s lip, a burst of pain he didn’t expect, and he flinched back.

Ren laughed loudly in his face. “Scare like one, too.”

Very suddenly, Tommy wanted him to leave.

He pulled himself back, and was relieved when Ren didn’t follow. “You know, I think we should probably wrap this up…I’ve got to train a bit more this afternoon.”

For a split second, Ren looked like he was about to argue, but then his face smoothed over, and he shrugged. “Yeah, of course. The race is what I’m here for, isn’t it? Make sure to provide me with some good entertainment, yeah?”

He clapped a hand on his shoulder as he made for the door, and a distinct wave of annoyance washed over Tommy at his words.

“Yeah, entertainment,” he said, trying to make his voice sound flippant. “It’d be a shame if I, like, died, right?”

“ _Great_ entertainment, then,” Ren said, and laughed as he opened the door.

Sunlight spilled in and Tommy’s eyes landed on Gabe, several feet away from the threshold, like he was just about to walk up and knock.

His eyes landed on Ren, laughing, and he froze mid step. Before Tommy could comprehend what was happening, a horrible, icy dread began to wash over him, starting from the very tip of his head.

“Ah, Gabe, old boy,” Ren said, as if they were friends, as if he were friends with any of them. “Did I take up your afternoon slot?”

He threw back his head and laughed. 

Gabe didn’t give him any sort of reaction whatsoever, but Ren kept chuckling as he made his way by, patting him on the shoulder like he’d just done to Tommy a few minutes before.

Gabe met Tommy’s eyes.

Never, even during the worst of his teenage years when the entire town was against him, had Tommy so wished to be swallowed up by the ground.

“I- I- ” Tommy started. There was not a single idea of what he was trying to say formulating correctly in his brain.

He wanted to explain, but there wasn’t anything _to_ explain. It was exactly what it looked like.

Gabe blinked. “You were….and him.”

Yes, Tommy was. And him. His heart was beating wildly in his chest, a sense of panic building around his ribcage.

“We- we just-” Tommy started again, but he didn’t know what to say, and he could still taste Ren on his mouth. He wanted to go brush his teeth, right away. “Look- it doesn’t really matter.”

Gabe was silent for a beat, as if Tommy’s words were taking some time to travel from his mouth to Gabe’s ears, before he said, “Why not?”

His voice was stilted, just slightly. Had Tommy not known him so well, he might not even have noticed.

 _Because Ren doesn’t mean anything to me_ , he should have said. _Because they were just some dumb kisses. Because he’s not-_

“It just- doesn’t,” Tommy said. And even from the distance over the threshold, Tommy could see the way the way Gabe’s face began to seal itself off.

“Do you do this all the time, then?” he asked, a new, hard edge to his voice.

Tommy let out a laugh before he could stop himself. It sounded slightly hysterical.

Gabe’s eyes darkened entirely.

“What?” Tommy said quickly, realizing that his response to that question was, without question, the worst he could have given. He put his hands out, palms empty. “No! Gabe, I don’t-”

He ran a hand through his hair. It was sticking up, and suddenly Tommy felt sick to his stomach. His lip was still stinging from where Ren had bit him.

“It was just this once,” he said. A lie, if he counted the boy from last year, and a lie, if he counted the two previous times with Ren in the last few days. “He just- he wanted to, and I…” _Didn’t want to say no._

Gabe’s eyes flashed, and his voice became harder, harsher, like suddenly he didn’t have enough to say. “Do you even know him? Didn’t he just arrive like, five days ago? You let him into your _flat?”_

A beat passed.

Stupidly, helplessly, Tommy felt another laugh bubble up his throat. He stared at Gabe. “What am I, your little sister?”

Because-  really, he hadn’t done anything _wrong._ Tommy could kiss a hundred people if he pleased.

Gabe’s cheeks pinked beneath his freckles, but he didn’t back down.

“I can handle myself fine, thanks,” Tommy said, tone edging into something icy.

“I didn’t say you couldn’t-”

“Sounded like you were.”

Gabe balled his hands into fists, and then let them go again. “Whatever, I don’t care what you do anyway.”

Tommy laughed, again, purposefully this time, because he liked how it made Gabe angry. “Really? Because it sounds like you do, a lot.”

Gabe’s face darkened into an unpleasant shade of red. It clashed with his hair and the sun and it wasn’t a good look on him, Tommy thought. “Shut the fuck up, Tommy, if you want to go be a fucking embarrassment, be my guest.”

This time, Tommy was too stunned to laugh. _“Excuse me?”_

“You’re lucky it was _me_ who caught him walking out of there,” Gabe said.

“Really? Am I?” Tommy said, and he could hear the way his voice was rising, because his blood was beginning to boil under his skin. “Funny, because _lucky_ isn’t exactly on the list of things I feel right now.”

“You’re a real fucking idiot, you know that, Tommy?” Gabe said, sharp and cold.

“And jealousy is hideous on you, Gabe Connolly,” Tommy spit back.

A deep, ugly red spread down Gabe’s neck at Tommy’s words. He took a step backward and said, voice low, “Fuck you.”

“No, seriously, you think people would be surprised to see a man walk out of my flat?” Tommy said. “Sure, they’d whisper about it, but that’s nothing I’m not used to, is it? So get of your damn high horse thinking I should feel _grateful_ to you for catching me so you could tell me what a damn embarrassment I am to society _._ Fuck _you,_ Gabe.”

Before Gabe could say anything else, he grabbed the handle of his door and slammed it in his face.

Tommy turned and kicked his old, ratty couch, once, twice, three times, breathing hard, because fuck him, _fuck him._

That night, he rode his horse until every part of him was raw.

 

-

 

There were only three days until the Scorpio Races, and normally Tommy would never dare drink so near racing, but normally circumstances didn’t call for it.

“I know you and Gabe refuse to tell me anything about what happened,” Beech said, kicking Tommy’s ankle beneath the table in the crowded Black Eyed Girl, and not gently, “but you guys need to go and make up soon. Splitting my time between you like this is dead annoying.”

“Is it,” Tommy said, flat, taking a long sip of his beer.

“Yeah, and neither of you are very much fun,” Beech said. His glass was already empty in front of him. “I’m going to go make some new friends if you both keep this up.”

“Are you even capable of making new friends?” Tommy said, raising an eyebrow.

A very sharp kick was directed into the bony part of his ankle.

“What the _hell_ , Beech-”

“Look, it’s your new friend,” Beech said, eyes caught somewhere near the entrance. The pub was packed to the brim, being so near the races. “Maybe I’ll make him _my_ friend, he certainly was more fun than you.” And to Tommy’s alarm, he began shouting and waving his hand. “Hey- hey you! What was his name again? You! With the beard!”

Tommy grabbed at Beech’s arm, hissing, “Beech, shut _up.”_

But it was too late. Ren was walking toward them, a smile on his face, and there had never been anyone Tommy had wanted to see less.

His beard had grown scruffier over the last few days, scraggly and unkempt around his mouth, and Tommy couldn’t believe that he had let himself kiss him, that he’d been that desperate. He felt slightly sick.

He’d been careful to avoid him the last few days, and he knew it was a risk coming here – the biggest gathering place in the town – but he liked to think that he might have gotten away with it had his best friend not been such an utter idiot.

“Hiya Beech, hiya Tommy.”

Without waiting to be asked, he took the seat beside Tommy. Tommy’s heart was beating hard in his chest, a strange panic building at the base of his throat.

Beech opened his mouth to make small talk, or perhaps say something else dumb, but Tommy didn’t- want to. He didn’t want to sit beside this man.

“Ah, sorry,” Tommy said, smiling, like he’d only just remembered something. “You know, it’s getting late and I was just thinking of heading off. Race is in a few days, you know.” He looked at Ren, and then at Beech, who was frowning. By the line of his brow, Tommy could tell he was gearing up to argue.

Maybe he _should_ have filled Beech in.

Tommy stood up. “I’ll see you round the races, yeah?”

“Tom, where-”

He didn’t let Beech finish. He made his way toward the door, pushing through the mass of people drinking and shouting and smoking and singing. When he finally stepped out onto the street, the air was cold and sweet and quiet, like everything had suddenly gone muted, and it was a relief.

He began up the street. Circles of orange hung from the streetlamps overhead, darkness edging over the corners of the road. Tommy could see his breath in front of him, and he stuck his hands into the pockets of his thin coat.

“Tommy!”

Tommy nearly stopped, a renewed burst of nerves shooting through him.

“Tommy, hold up, will you?”

He hesitated, because he didn’t, _didn’t_ want to stop for Ren, but he didn’t want to be an impolite ass. He couldn’t just pretend he hadn’t heard him. His legs faltered, and he turned halfway.

“Oi, there you are.” Ren was closer than he thought, catching up quickly. Tommy suddenly cursed himself for ever being welcoming to him on the dock, that very first day.

“Quick getaway,” Ren said, panting, once he was close enough. His face was strangely pale beneath the light of the streetlamp, washed out and pasty. His hair stuck to his forehead. He grinned, and reached for Tommy’s hand.

Tommy pulled it back.

Ren blinked, and then he frowned.

“Don’t tell me,” he said, and raised his eyebrows, “you’re _actually_ going home?”

“I said I was, didn’t I,” said Tommy.

Ren’s frown deepened. “Don’t play with me, Tommy-boy.”

Tommy’s discomfort disappeared as he felt a sudden, vicious fury at the use of the name. “I’m not. I’m going home.” And then he turned on his heel and started walking again.

A hand grabbed the neck of his coat, yanking him backward. Tommy nearly slipped on the slick cobblestones beneath their feet.

Ren’s breath was suddenly hot in his ear.

“You really are like a woman, aren’t you?” he said, the click of his tongue audible against the roof of his mouth.  “Fucking mood swings. Should have known, by that pretty face, that’d you’d end up _actually_ being a little pussy.”

Tommy whirled himself around, his first in Ren’s jaw before Ren had even let go of his coat.

Ren let go of him, and he might have fought back had someone from behind not grabbed him by the arm and thrown another punch squarely at his nose.

“Beech! Beech, stop, you’re going to kill him,” Tommy said, reaching for Beech’s arms as he went at Ren a third time, and a fourth.

Tommy grabbed Beech’s hands and pulled him away. Ren groaned in pain, high-pitched and ugly, falling against the wall of the nearest shop and bringing his hands to his face, beaten and bloody.

“Yeah, _fuck_ you!” said Beech, pulling at Tommy’s hold on his arms.

“Beech, shut _up,_ ” said Tommy, glancing around. The last thing he needed was to get arrested two days before the Scorpio Races.

“No, what the hell Tommy, let me go-”

“Shut up!” Tommy hissed, and began dragging him down the street.

When they reached the end of the road, away from the shops, Beech finally wrestled himself out of Tommy’s hold. He turned to face Tommy, fury written across his face.

“What the hell, Tom?” he said. “What was that guy _doing?”_

Tommy was trying to catch his breath. “What do you mean?”

“Well it was weird, wasn’t it?” Beech said, wiping the back of his forehead with his forearm. “You get up and leave the second he sits down, and then less than two minutes later he says he has to go. So I followed him, because it was just _weird_. And then I see him following you and suddenly he’s got you in a chokehold and you’re punching him in the face.”

“But you didn’t hear what he said?” Tommy asked.

Beech frowned. “No. What did he say?”

Tommy shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

Beech threw his hands up. Tommy noticed they were covered in blood, but it didn’t look particularly strange on a butcher. “You and Gabe and your fucking secrets! I know the two of you are fucking in love with each other, I’m your friend, too! You can’t tell me why you punched some guy in the street, even after I helped get rid of him for you? What the hell!”

Beech spun away, practically growling in frustration, but all of the air had left Tommy’s lungs and his ears had stopped listening halfway through.

“You- what do you mean?”

Beech looked at him again, eyes slightly wild. “What do _you_ _mean,_ what do I mean? It’s no secret that if you and Gabe had a choice, you’d both pick each other over me! And that’s fine, I get it- but why can’t you fucking _tell me things?”_

Tommy felt the feeling return to his fingertips, but he wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed that this was what Beech meant.

Then Beech’s words sunk in, and with it came the first touches of guilt- because he wasn’t wrong.

Tommy ran a hand through his hair. “I know, Beech. I’m sorry.”

“Fine, you’re sorry.” Beech rolled his eyes, and Tommy knew he deserved that. “So are you going to keep keeping your secrets? What is going on between you and Gabe? And why the hell did I just beat up that guy for you?”

Tommy couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up his throat. The wind was cold against his face. He looked at Beech’s hands. “Come on,” he said, putting a hand on Beech’s shoulder. “Let’s go back to my place and get you cleaned up first.”

 

-

Tommy pressed the tips of his fingers together. Everything was warm and silent, though the tea he’d made for himself and Beech had probably gone cold, sitting on his rickety coffee table.

The silence barely lasted.

“Oh. Well, yeah,” Beech said, and then he shrugged and reached for the cold tea.

Tommy looked up at him. “What?”

Beech took a long sip from his mug. “Am I supposed to be surprised? Just wish you hadn’t gone for such a prick.”

“Oh,” Tommy said, and a new, fresh wave of relief washed over him “Oh, okay.”

Beech looked at him a little strangely. “I know you don’t tell me all your secrets, but Tom, you _are_ my best mate.” _And I know you_ , he didn’t say, but Tommy heard.

Before Tommy could respond, could find some words appropriate enough to convey how he felt about that without coming off as a dumb sap, a look of realization came over Beech’s face.

“ _Oh._ So that’s why Gabe’s mad at you.”

Tommy looked at him. A beat too late he said, “What do you mean?”

Beech gave him a look. It bordered on exasperated. “What did I literally _just_ say, Tom?” he said. “You’re my best mate, and so is Gabe. I’m not as stupid as I look.”

Tommy debated defusing it with a joke. _Really? Because you look awfully stupid._ He had a nearly conclusive inkling that it would be no help.

And what was the purpose of lying to Beech, now, after such a conversation? What was the point of ever lying to Beech, or anyone? Tommy was tired of it.

Beech was one of his best friends, and Tommy _was_ guilty of underestimating him.

“No,” he said, softly “you’re not stupid, Beech.”

 

-

 

It was the night before the Scorpio Races, and Tommy was jittery.

He’d gone out with Beech earlier, just like they did every year the night before the races, but something was lacking without Gabe there. Well- everything was lacking.

But he appreciated Beech more than ever for being his friend, even if that meant Beech yelling “YOU’VE GOT NOTHING ON SEAN KENDRICK” in front of an entire pub full of people, including Sean Kendrick.

Tommy lay on his tiny, hard mattress in the tiny, cold room, imagining how things could go the next day, even when he’d done it so many times before. Thoughts of scoring an unimaginable first place. And dark, slippery thoughts that he rarely let pass through his mind of how everything could go wrong.

He shoved his pillow into his face, hoping to somehow stifle the sound of his mind, when he heard the knock.

It was soft, like it was almost afraid of being heard, on his front door. Tommy wasn’t sure if he imagined it, but then it came again, slightly stronger.

His first thought came with a small dose of fear. _Ren. He knows where I live. He’s back._

But- Ren wouldn’t knock like that. Ren never did anything softly.

Tommy sat up, shoving his thin blanket off of himself and walking through his tiny flat in the darkness. He pulled the sleeves of his sweater over his hands before he opened the door.

Cool air came streaming in, and in front of him stood Gabe.

His hair was a mess from the wind, but it was dry, and his face was lost in inky, blue night air. His hands were deep in the pockets of his jacket, elbows tucked close to his sides.

“Hi,” Gabe said. He looked almost startled, as if he hadn’t expected anyone to actually answer. “You’re awake.”

“Hey,” said Tommy, balling the ends of his sleeves in his palms. His heart began to patter erratically in his chest. “I’m awake.”  

“I- um,” Gabe started, with the fleetest pause. He met Tommy’s eyes. “I wanted to apologize.”

It was like Gabe to get straight to the point, even at nearly two in the morning.

“Right now?” Tommy said anyway.

Gabe drew his arms more tightly by his sides, hunching his shoulders together just slightly. “Yeah.”

Stupidly, so easily, something in Tommy softened.

He stepped outside and closed his door behind him. The sky was so clear tonight. “Okay.”

He sat down on his little doorstep, dirt soft beneath and his feet, the chill from the stone bleeding through his pajama pants. Gabe sat down beside him.

“I’m sorry,” Gabe said immediately, as if he couldn’t stand the silence. It was a quiet night, with nothing but the wind whispering through the trees and the grass around them, a door on one of the old flats creaking around the corner. Stars dotted the sky overhead. “It was out of line, what I said.”

“Yeah,” Tommy agreed, softly.

They both faced forward, toward the swaying trees and the darkness of the sky. “I didn’t mean it,” Gabe continued, voice gentle. “I wasn’t expecting to find him there and I got- mad.” Tommy watched the way Gabe dug the heel of his boot into the wet dirt beneath their feet. “But I shouldn’t have. I had no right to. You can do whatever you like and I’m sorry I was so- terrible about it.”

“You were a little terrible,” Tommy agreed.

“I know,” Gabe said, as if he hadn’t just said it. His hands were still deep in his pockets. His voice caught a tone of urgency. “I don’t think that of you. I’ve never thought that of you. I promise, Tommy, I was just-”

He abruptly cut himself off.

_And jealousy is hideous on you, Gabe Connolly._

Tommy ran a hand through his hair. “I said some pretty terrible things, too.”

Gabe looked at him. “Because I was being an ass.”

Tommy shrugged. “Still.”

The sound of the breeze was the only thing between them for a moment, and then Gabe said, softly, staring at his feet again, “You were right, though, I shouldn’t have reacted that way, as someone who’s supposed to be your best friend.” He pressed his hands against the bottoms of his pockets, as if searching for some extra hidden space in his coat he could bury them in further. “I know I didn’t exactly prove it, but you can tell me things, Tom.” He looked up, straight ahead, into the darkness of the trees. “If you really like him, I’m happy for you."

Tommy let out a breathy laugh at that. “I don’t like him, Gabe.”

Gabe finally looked up at him, startled. “What?”

“I don’t like him,” Tommy said, squishing his own shoe in the dirt. “I never really liked him. He just offered something to me and I took it.”

Gabe looked back down at his feet. “Oh.”

 “And what he offered me isn’t what you’re thinking,” he said. He paused. “Well, I guess it is, but I didn’t take all of it.”

“Oh,” Gabe said again, except this time he sounded slightly strangled.

Tommy couldn’t help but laugh again, breathy and awkward. He ran a hand through his hair. The air between them was so thick. “Sorry, too much information?”

“No,” Gabe said quickly. He ducked his head. “Maybe.”

“Well he wasn’t very nice, so,” Tommy shrugged again. “I may have punched him in the face last night. And Beech might have helped.”

Gabe looked at him again, eyebrows halfway up his forehead. “What?”

So Tommy told him, only a little surprised that he hadn’t already heard the story from Beech, because surely Beech would love recounting how he beat up some mainland jerk.

Gabe seemed to wrestle between anger and amusement as Tommy finished the story.

“Good,” he said, nodding, a frown on his face, “What an idiot. I wish I’d been there to help.”

Tommy smiled wryly. “I don’t know if we needed to cause him that much damage.”

Gabe caught his smile, and he smiled back, just slightly, frown disappearing for the first time since he’d arrived. Tommy’s chest softened again.

Gabe pulled his hands out of his pockets and rested them on top of his knees, his shoulders more relaxed than before. “I’m sorry that happened to you, Tom. I’m sorry I made it worse.”

“I just can’t believe Beech was the only one that came through for me,” Tommy said.

Gabe huffed a laugh. “I promise I’ll be there next time.”

“I hope there won’t be someone worth beating up next time.” 

Gabe looked up at him, and Tommy held his gaze, just for a moment.

Gabe’s eyes drifted away. “I hope that too.”

Tommy pressed his hands between his knees. The chilly wind was slipping through the yarn of his sweater, and his heart was beating in his throat.

“Are we okay, then?” Tommy asked him.

“I feel like I should be asking you that,” said Gabe.

Tommy smiled, lips pressed together, soft and easy. “Then yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Gabe laughed, the sound lovely and genuine, and when he said “Yeah,” one more time, Tommy’s heart throbbed a little.

“You have your race tomorrow,” Gabe said, and it sounded like the beginning of a goodbye. “I should let you sleep.”

“Yeah,” Tommy sighed. “Maybe next time schedule your apology for a daylight hour? When I don’t have anything big going on the next day?”

Gabe grinned, slightly sheepish. “I just hope there won’t be anything I need to apologize for at any hour.”

“That’d be nice,” Tommy said, in a tone that made it clear he didn’t see that happening, and Gabe shoved him.

But he was smiling, and when the cold breeze blew Gabe’s hair into his face, Tommy’s fingers twitched.

He stood up, and Gabe followed. Tommy put his hand on his doorknob. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Of course.” Gabe had put his hands back into his pockets. “I’m always there.”

Something sweet settled in Tommy’s chest.

“Think I’ll beat Sean Kendrick?”

“Not a chance.”

“You _used_ to believe I had one.”

“He’s won so many times now it’d just makes me sound like an idiot to say otherwise.”

“I take back my apology.”

Gabe grinned again, widely, teeth and all, and when the wind blew his hair back in his face, this time Tommy reached forward and pushed it out of his eyes.

Gabe’s hair was cold and coarse from the wind, a little tangled between Tommy’s fingers, his scalp solid and warm beneath his fingertips.

Gabe froze.

Abruptly, Tommy pulled away.

It was slightly difficult speaking with all the air drained from his own lungs, unable to believe he’d just done that.

“You- really need a haircut.”

Gabe blinked at him, lips slightly parted.

Tommy opened the door of his flat.  “Night, Gabe.”

Then he slipped inside, heart pounding so wildly he put a hand to his chest, as if that might calm it. He counted to sixty before peeking out his window.

Gabe was gone.

Tommy really, _really_ needed to get some sleep before the Scorpio Races tomorrow. He just hoped it was possible.

 

-

 

Tommy nearly went careening off his horse the moment he crossed the finish line.

His entire lifeforce seemed to hinge on nothing but adrenaline, heart beating ruthlessly against his ribcage, and his head buzzed with raw, metallic fear.

The moment his horse finally slowed to a trot, he dismounted, sloppy, legs like jelly. He slipped right down into the sand from much too high and yet he felt no pain, his entire body was shaking, and _he was alive, he was alive._

Someone was pulling him up by the armpit, one of the race attendants, to get him out of the way of incoming racers. Tommy went easily, blindly, until he was set back into the sand outside the zone of the finish line.

The yells and shouts and cheers around him sounded muted and fuzzy, and he looked down at his pants and shirt, flecked with pinpricks of red. Like he’d gotten caught in a short, bloody rainfall.  

Had he been even a millisecond slower, it could have been his.

Suddenly, he was being pulled up by the armpit again, both of them, but instead of being deposited somewhere new, he was being pulled against someone’s chest. Warm. Familiar.

Tommy closed his eyes.

“Gabe, mate, let him breathe,” came Beech’s voice, and then the arms disappeared.

Tommy blinked. His two best friends stood in front of him, one face wide-eyed and pale, the other with his eyebrows nearly in his hair.

“That looked- terrifying,” Gabe said, breathless.

Tommy nodded, voice stuck in his throat.

There had been a collision of racers _just_ behind him, so close that one horse had snapped his teeth around his water horse’s tale. Yanked backward, nearly airborn, Tommy had been sure, for a split second, that he was about to take his final breaths.

But with a furious burst of power, his horse had made it out, and he’d dashed, as fast as he’d ever ridden, to the finish line.

“What,” he said, gasping. He licked his lips and looked between their faces. “What place did I  get?”

Beech’s lips began to stretch.

“Tom,” he said, a full-out grin blooming on his face, “you came in second.”

 

-

 

Sean Kendrick came in first, of course.

The ceremony passed in a blur, during which Tommy received far less than first place but “still something, Beech, it’s _good,”_ and Beech decided it was finally time to organize a protest. Everything felt surreal- the fact that he was alive, that he’d come in _second place_. So many people hugged him, many he didn’t even recognize. His parents were torn between congratulating him and hugging him so many times his chest began to feel sore.

“Whatever,” Beech said, once the beach was finally beginning to clear as people made their way back to town for the celebrations. “You’ll get your _real_ prize money’s worth in free drinks tonight.”

“Sure,” said Tommy, distractedly. He ran a hand through his hair and discovered it felt sticky. It wasn’t raining today- in fact, the sky was a perfect, clear blue. He had the sudden urge to dunk his entire body into the ocean.

“I think I’m going to clean up first,” Tommy said, gesturing to his blood-speckled clothes. And he needed some air, just a little bit.

Beech shrugged, but Gabe eyed him. He’d been hovering the entire time, and that strange, panicked look on his face had dimmed only slightly.

Tommy had the sense that leaving Gabe here would be like leaving some nervous, lost puppy. He looked at him. “Want to come?”

Gabe nodded mutely, and Beech said he’d see them later, and then the two of them were heading up the cliff to his flat.

Tommy felt himself beginning to relax as the noises faded behind them, nothing but the wind in his ears and the dirt soft beneath his feet. He felt like he was starting to come back to himself.

They made their way to his flat in silence. Gabe waited out in the sunshine, sitting on the very step they’d sat on the night before, while Tommy washed and changed.

Tommy emerged again, clean and sore and head much, much clearer than it had been before. Gabe looked up at him, sun gleaming off his hair, and Tommy felt himself smile.

Gabe stood up, ready to go back to town, but Tommy said, “I don’t feel like going back down there yet.”

So they walked, up and up and up, until they got to the very top of the cliff. There was no one up there, of course, not that day. The wind was chilly, rustling the long grass, and the late afternoon sun was so bright and clear that Tommy threw his arms out, soaking it up and taking a deep breath.

“Gabe,” he said, and turned to find Gabe already looking at him, “I thought I was going to die.”

Gabe took a deep breath, and said, looking away, “So did I.”

Tommy sat down on a nearby boulder, and Gabe waited a moment before sitting down on the space beside him. The wind blew his hair back from his forehead, sun illuminating his freckled face.

“Did it look that bad?” Tommy asked.

“I told you,” Gabe said, looking out over the cliff. The sea stretched before them, the entirety of the island behind them. “It was terrifying.”

“It helped me come in second place, though,” Tommy said. “I was so scared I just-” He made a _swoosh_ sound, throwing his arm out.

Gabe didn’t say anything for a moment, just stared out over the sea. Then he turned to look at him again. “So it’s worth dying, then?”

Was it? He just knew that it had happened, and he was grateful. “Probably not.”  

Gabe just looked back out to the sea. Tommy wasn’t sure if he was satisfied with that answer or not. Most likely not.

After a moment of silence that began to drag on too long, Tommy nudged him in the side. “Hey,” he said, “it’s not that big of a deal.” At least, it didn’t feel as big of a deal as it had the moment he’d finished.

Gabe looked at him, eyebrows raised. “Not that big of a- you almost _died,_ Tommy.”

“But I’m alive.”

Gabe’s arm pressed against his. “But what if you _weren’t?”_

“Well- I, well then I’d be dead,” Tommy said, unsure of the logic of the question. “But I’m not.”

Gabe didn’t seem to hear him, the light of the sun glinting off his eyes, like his pupils were burning. “Do you have any idea how it feels, to be up there, watching every year? It’s awful, Tommy. It’s terrifying.”

“Not as terrifying as actually being in the races, though,” Tommy felt the need to point out.

“Okay, fine, it’s not,” Gabe said, shaking his head, hair flying over his forehead in the wind. “But do you know what I do, Tom? Every year, I brace myself in case you die.”

Tommy closed his mouth.  

“Today was the first time you ever really came close,” Gabe said. He looked at him again. “Do you know what I learned?”

Tommy blinked. “What?”

“I learned,” Gabe said, taking a deep breath, “that no matter how much I prepare, I’ll never actually be ready.”

Tommy’s stomach turned over as Gabe’s words sunk in, slowly. The sound of the wind in the grass, of the ocean roaring distantly beneath them, suddenly filled the space between them. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of those words.

When he looked back up, there was a split second between when their eyes met, and when Gabe leaned over and kissed him.

Tommy’s breath disappeared into the wind.

Gabe’s lips were soft, and chilly, and a little bit dry. But they were purposeful, close-mouthed and firm, as if intending to leave something there. And then they were gone.

There was no air left in Tommy’s lungs. He wasn’t quite sure he knew _how_ to breathe. His heart pounded so hard in his chest it almost hurt. 

When he looked at Gabe’s face, eyes wide, it was redder than he’d ever seen it, like a terrible sunburn.

Tommy’s voice was stuck somewhere in his throat, or maybe even in his stomach. His lips tingled, hot. Stunned.

Gabe had kissed him.

Tommy’s entire body felt warm amidst the chill of the wind – a little _too_ warm, skin feverish, like the sun’s rays were suddenly shining solely on him. His heart still beat too hard in his ribcage. He nearly brought a hand to it like the night before.

When he said nothing - because he didn’t quite know what to say or how to say it or where his voice had gone – Gabe began to look away, shrinking slightly, eyes traveling down to his feet.

“Wait,” Tommy croaked, as if Gabe was going somewhere, and he reached out and grabbed his wrist.

Gabe looked back up at him, his face, if possible, flushing a deeper scarlet.

Tommy still didn’t quite know what to say, knew only that he didn’t want Gabe’s attention anywhere else. Tommy had waited, he had waited _so long_. A bruise was surely forming on his chest where his heart beat against it. 

Tommy’s hand was shaking, fingers tight around Gabe’s wrist. Or maybe it was Gabe’s hand shaking in his grip.

“I-” Gabe started, sounding strangled. “I-”

“Please,” Tommy said, though he wasn’t quite sure what he was asking for. Only _please, please Gabe, please._

Eyes wide, hands shaking, Gabe seemed to understand.

He took a deep, unsteady breath, hair brushing over his eyes. This time, when his lips found Tommy’s, Tommy let his eyelids flutter shut.

His lips were gentle, and ironically, a little more hesitant than before. But even warm and closed mouth, Tommy felt his hand around Gabe’s wrist going weak. When Gabe began to pull away, Tommy leaned in and kissed him back.

Gabe let in a little intake of breath, mouth falling open just slightly against Tommy’s. Heart beating in his ears, Tommy kissed him again, finding the softness just beyond Gabe’s bottom lip.

When they pulled away, Tommy’s heart was still hopelessly erratic in his chest and Gabe still trembled slightly.

Tommy slid his fingers encircling Gabe’s wrist down to his hand, threading them into the spaces between Gabe’s fingers.

When he looked back up, Gabe was staring down at their hands, cheeks – and lips – a bright, rosy red. Sunlight illuminated the side of his face, shining off of his bright hair.

Tommy thought, _how could dying for the Scorpio Races have been worth it, when I had not yet done this?_

Tommy squeezed his fingers, and Gabe looked up.

“I’m glad I survived the race for you to do that,” he said.

Gabe’s face flushed again, and then he laughed, breathy but real. He used his free hand to push his hair out of his eyes, and looked away. “I’m just glad that you survived at all.”

Tommy felt the urge to tell him not to worry so much, but- these _were_ the Scorpio Races. Even the unbeatable Sean Kendrick’s father had died in them.

The wind blew past them again, and Gabe’s hair fell back over his eyes. Before Gabe could push it back again, Tommy used his own free hand to brush it away. It was an urge he could finally give into, even in the smallest way, just to touch Gabe. He always wanted to touch Gabe. And he didn’t want him to get the haircut he’d mentioned the night before, not ever.

Gabe stiffened, slightly, under his touch.

Then Gabe looked up at him, eyes wide and irises tinged orange by the sunset, revealing them in striking detail. His freckles were close enough to count. He smiled slightly, shyly.

Tommy’s breath caught in his throat. “Gabe,” he said, “will you kiss me again?”

Gabe nodded. He brought his hand to Tommy’s face, skin warm, much less hesitant than before, and kissed him. Tommy kissed him back, hard, again and again and again, fingers finding their way through his hair, until their lips were impossibly numb and the sky had faded to a dark, dusty purple.

 

-

Later, days and days later, after nights spent at the Black Eyed Girl celebrating his second place near-win (though Sean Kendrick didn’t show up any night to celebrate his first place win, which “basically makes you first place, Tom,” Beech said with a thump on his back), Gabe crowded him against the door of his flat.

It was late, very late, and dark, the only light from the pinpricks of stars overhead and a sliver of moon. Gabe’s mouth was warm in the cold air and they both tasted like alcohol.

“Goodnight,” Gabe said, kissing him. “I’m leaving now,” he said, and kissed him again. “Goodnight.” He kissed him again.

Tommy laughed easily, smiling against his lips, letting Gabe kiss him again, hands on his thin hips. “You’re so forward at night,” he said, teasing. “Am I not pretty enough when you can actually see me during the day?”

By daylight, Gabe was hesitant, blushing, bashful and shy to even hold Tommy’s hand when no one else was around, not that they’d ever do it _with_ anyone around. But it made sense, this was still so new, and Tommy found it incredibly endearing – but once they’d had their fun at the pub and the sun had gone down, it was as if all of his walls went down as well.

At these words, Gabe pulled away and didn’t lean back in, and Tommy’s hands tightened on his waist.

“Gabe-”

“You’re pretty all the time,” Gabe said in a rush, and Tommy knew he had had more to drink than he did. “Tom- I’m just- I’m an idiot.”

Tommy couldn’t help the laugh that tumbled out of his mouth. He reached a hand up to push the hair from Gabe’s forehead. “What are you talking about?”

“You know I don’t find you an embarrassment, right?” Gabe said in another breath, before it hitched in his throat. He closed his eyes. “God, I wish I’d never said that. I wish I could go back in time and stop myself from saying that.”

Tommy’s stomach sank slightly. He moved his hand to Gabe’s cheek. “Gabe,” he said again, gently. “Are you still thinking about that? I told you, I’ve forgiven you.”

Gabe opened his eyes. “I know, but-”

Tommy brushed his thumb over his mouth. “I know you didn’t mean it,” he said softly. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to the corner of Gabe’s mouth.

“I just wish,” Gabe said after a pause once Tommy had pulled away. “I _wish_ I could do this in front of everyone.”

Tommy’s chest warmed in a sad way. “I know what you mean.”

Gabe was quiet, and then he said, “The mainland is different, I’ve heard.”

Tommy kissed him again, warm. “Good thing we’re going there, then.”

When he kissed him again – “One more, okay? Goodnight. Goodnight.” – he could feel Gabe smiling against his lips, hope swirling bright and warm in his limbs.

 

 

GABE

There is a chicken roasting in the oven, the house pleasantly warm, and Gabe and Tommy had talked about the mainland a bit too much in front of Puck and Finn.

Gabe isn’t quite sure how to diffuse the sudden melancholy, but, as usual, Tommy comes to the rescue.

He stands up from his chair, holding his hands out toward Puck. “Don’t be down,” he says. “It’s not like we won’t come back. We’ll send money, too.” He grins. “Haven’t you seen Esther Quinn’s clothing, Puck? Her brother’s on the mainland selling something to somebody and he sends home money — that’s why she looks like she was bought from a catalog.” He shoots a glance at Gabe, grinning wider. “When’s a good visit, Gabe? Easter, maybe? Easter’s a good time to come back. We’ll throw more chickens,” he adds, referring to the way they’d tossed around the chicken they’d brought for Puck to cook for dinner.

Gabe’s throat grows strangely and unexpectedly tight as he thinks, _I don’t care if I never return,_ and at the same time, of Puck and Finn never leaving. He grabs his father’s old concertina and begins to play.

Tommy grabs Puck by the waist and spins her around. Although it's awkward at first, it doesn’t take long for her to laugh.

“Come now, you can move faster than that! Everyone says you were a spitfire on the cliffs this morning,” Tommy says, spinning her again. The fire reflects off of both of their skin in the low light. Gabe keeps playing. He often forgets how much he enjoys playing music- that always seemed to belong to Tommy. And Gabe just never has the time, not anymore.

“They do?” Puck says.

“They’re saying,” Tommy says, lowering his voice conspiratorially, “that you and Sean Kendrick were burning up the cliffs.” He spins her again and grins. “And when I say you and Sean Kendrick, I mean you and Sean Kendrick. And by burning, I mean burning.”

Gabe feels himself frown, but before he can say anything, Puck halts their dance. She raises an eyebrow. “You worried?” she says, as if Tommy is talking about _racing._

A mischievous smirk comes over Tommy’s face, and when his eyes slide to Gabe, Gabe knows he isn’t going to like what next comes out of his mouth. “It’s Gabe who should be worried,” he says, and swings Puck around again. “Because his baby sister’s growing up so fine.”

He raises his eyebrows at Gabe from over Puck’s shoulder, face practically glittering in the fire, and Gabe decides he doesn’t exactly like what Tommy is trying to get at with this. Tommy isn’t going to _toy_ with him using his _sister_ in his own living room.

He stops the concertina abruptly.

“Don’t make me punch you in the mouth, Tommy,” he says when Tommy, Puck, and Finn all looked at him. He looks at Puck. “When’s that chicken going to be done, Kate?” 

He doesn’t miss the way Tommy mouths, _Oooooh,_ Kate, at her. Gabe ignores him.

Puck shrugs, crossing her arms. “Twenty minutes,” she says. “Maybe thirty. Maybe ten.”

There’s a knock at the door, and suddenly Sean Kendrick himself is standing in the room, quiet and stiff and looking a bit like he accidentally wandered into their house when he was meant to end up somewhere else entirely. Everyone crowds around him immediately. Gabe takes his jacket from him as Tommy says, “Cold out there? Clouds blocking all that blistering moonlight?” and Finn laughs and laughs and Puck smiles like she’s trying not to.

 

-

 

“Your sister and Sean Kendrick,” Tommy says as Gabe upends the chicken pan full of nothing but grease into the dirt outside their front door. Tommy pulls it closed and leans against the side of the house, hands in his pockets. The warm glow through the window casts shadows across his face. “Who’d have thought?”

“Didn’t realize you followed me out here to gossip,” Gabe says, glancing up at him and raising an eyebrow. He shakes the pan; congealed grease plops to the ground in chunks.

“I think gossip would imply something shady, and if those two were any _less_ shady, they’d be sucking each other’s faces off right in front of us,” Tommy says.

“Ugh, Tom, can you not say that about my sister?”

“They were practically ready to start reciting wedding vows at the dinner table.”

Gabe feels his lips quirk despite himself. “Lay off Puck now, will you?”

But Tommy is grinning at him, and Gabe supposes in truth, he likes how well Tommy and Puck get along. It makes something very, very deep within him feel strangely warm, though he will never, ever admit that. The warmth of the house and the laughter and good company, not to mention the delicious food in his belly, has sated and loosened him in a way he hadn’t felt in a while.

“Did you not like the way we flirted earlier?” Tommy says, leaning forward as Gabe shakes the last of the grease out of the pan. His grin deepens, one cheek dimpling ever so slightly. The evening had loosened him up too, which meant that he was exceptionally silly.

Gabe rolls his eyes and lets the pan drop to his side.

“Finn’s going to start spreading rumors about it, probably. We’ll be the talk of the town.”

“Didn’t realize you were looking for publicity.”

“I’m in the Scorpio Races, of course I’m looking for publicity.”

Gabe finally laughs, a puff of white air.

“Well if Puck keeps it up with Sean, she’s going to be the one drawing all the eyes.”

“Crap, why didn’t _I_ get with Sean Kendrick years ago?” Tommy says.

“Because he’d turn your sorry ass down,” says Gabe, grinning.

“No,” Tommy says, thoughtfully, drawing out the word. His eyes snap back to Gabe, wide and bright. “I think it’s because my sorry heart was already taken.”

Sometimes, Gabe thinks Tommy should write the things he said down, put them in song lyrics or something, even though half the things he says probably aren’t as lovely as they sound. They just always sound that way to Gabe.

Gabe was terrible at romance, anyway. He never felt like he could find the right words for anything. Like now.

“That is kind of stupid,” he says, and then immediately wishes he’d said nothing instead.

Luckily for him, Tommy always seems to understand.

Tommy puts a hand over his own heart, pulling a grimace. “Did you hear that, heart? The most beautiful man in the world thinks you’re stupid.”

Gabe kicks at his shin. Tommy laughs.

Tommy grabs the front of his shirt and pulls him closer, into his space, and presses a smiling kiss to Gabe’s mouth. He’s hot amidst the cold that the moonlight doesn’t quite warm, and Gabe thinks with a greasy chicken pan in his hand, _I love you._

Tommy kisses him again, and Gabe kisses him back, putting a hand to his chest and pushing him against the side of the house a little too hard. Tommy laughs again, sweet against Gabe’s mouth.

Suddenly, Gabe’s senses are flooded with light.

In the next second, he and Tommy are feet apart, but Gabe can tell by the look in Sean Kendrick’s eyes that he’s seen.

Something ice cold falls into the pit of Gabe’s stomach. The moment he’s always dreaded. _We were being reckless, we should have been more careful, we should have gone out further in the yard-_

But then Sean just nods, expression unreadable, as he steps down onto the front pathway. “See you around Tommy, Gabe. Thanks for dinner,” he says, and then he’s down the path, and gone.

Gabe can feel Tommy’s gaze, his heart pounding, but before he can look back at him, Puck appears in the doorway.

“What are you two doing out here in the cold? You’re going to catch your deaths, and Tommy, you can’t be sick for the races!”

Tommy blinks, and then, like magic, he smiles again.

“What about Gabe?”

“Doesn’t matter about him, he never does anything important.” Without a second glance, Puck turns back inside.

The words jar Gabe back to his senses, heart still pounding. “Hey now!”

Tommy grabs his hand and pulls him back inside where the warmth is, giving it a squeeze before he lets go.

 

 

TOMMY

“You know what I thought when they told me?” Gabe said days after, voice tucked quietly into Tommy’s chest. Gabe’s body was a dead weight on top of him in the tiny, silent room, his voice gruff from underuse.

“What?” Tommy said, softly. It was the first thing Gabe had said since he’d shown up on Tommy’s doorstep that morning, eyes bleary and red and his body shivering all over.

“I thought, ‘But we’re going to the mainland.’ That was the first thing I thought.”

Tommy took his hand from where he’d had it resting on Gabe’s back and brought it to his hair, pushing it back, gently, and pressed a hard kiss to his forehead. He could feel the sting of wetness in the corners of his own eyes.

“I wish I hadn’t thought that,” Gabe said, voice thinning. “I hate it. I hate that I thought that.” He took a deep breath, pushing his face into Tommy’s neck.

Gabe’s parents had been dead for eight days.

-

The funeral had been gray and overcast, and packed, people everywhere – the Connollys had been good, friendly folk – but all Tommy could remember were the forms of a hunched Gabe, tear-streaked Puck, and silently weeping Finn in front of him. Front row at the church, front row at the grave. In front, out of reach, alone.

There were a lot of words spoken, none of which Tommy could quite remember now, and he cried through most of it, without a care or a shame. The Connollys had always been kind to him.

Tommy hadn’t gotten a chance to see Gabe for very long that day. It was amazing, the way people had a way of crowding the Connolly siblings and keeping their distance at the same time, never giving Tommy a chance. It was amazing, that all he wanted to do was stand up there in the front row beside Gabe, but couldn’t. He sat with his family, and then with Beech for a little while, and then the funeral was over and everyone was bringing all the food they had to the Connolly house.

“This will last us a year,” Puck had said, empty, staring blankly at her own kitchen, filled with people and food and more people, while Finn stood beside her, weeping, endlessly silently weeping that day. Tommy’s own mother had made them seven fruit pies.

All of it had felt a bit surreal. Gabe seemed to be walking in a daze whenever Tommy saw him. Tommy had wanted to hug him, to reach out, to kiss some color back into his cheeks. But there were always _people._

“I don’t know what to do, Tom,” he’d said that day, later, once everyone had gone. Or maybe it had been the day it happened. Or maybe it was today, alone in Tommy’s room, the first significant amount of time they’d had alone together.

Tommy could feel the tears dampening his shirt, the first real crying he’d seen Gabe do. Even that first day, when it happened, he hadn’t really cried, had just been pale and white-faced, like some sort of ghost.

This was almost a strange relief, Tommy thought, as Gabe wept into his chest, quietly, like Finn had. It was a relief, Tommy thought as tears leaked down the sides of his own face.

They had planned to leave for the mainland that day, had bought tickets for a boat that had already left that morning, the two of them and Beech. But, Tommy thought, running his hand through Gabe’s hair as he scrunched the fabric of Tommy’s shirt into his fists, crying quiet tears like his brother - _but_ , Tommy thought, sometimes things just ended up the way they did.

They always knew that Thisby wasn’t the nice place. A tired piece of knowledge, by now.

 

 

GABE

_Fish, fish, fish._

Everything smells like fish. His clothes, his hair, his skin, the very air around him permeates that terrible, pungent smell that he would go home and find under his nails, in the swirls of his fingertips-

_I need to get out of here._

It’s like a hook tugging at his chest, this need to leave, today, tomorrow, _soon._ The Scorpio Races be damned.

The sky is gray and swirling overhead, the wind hissing in his ears, the air strangely electric. Being out on the inn boat today was particularly terrible, reminding him of his work before his parents died, and his clothes are damp all the way through, rubbing at his skin, cold and clammy and harsh. He can feel the sores already forming.

All he wants to do is go to Tommy’s.

He trudges down the gravel path, rocks crunching beneath his wet boots. He is at least lucky that it hasn’t begun to rain, but the thought brings him no comfort. If anything, the sky’s hesitation, this horrible mist and wind, only annoys him more. _Make up your mind._  

He hates it here, he _hates_ it.

“Gabe!”

He looks up. Finn, running from the direction of town. _What,_ he thinks, _What is it now?_ He just wants to be at Tommy’s.

But Finn looks frazzled, face white, and before Gabe can fully take that in the words are spilling out of his mouth faster than Gabe can comprehend them.

“Gabe, Gabe, Tommy’s been attacked by a water horse-”

The world stops turning.

So many of his nightmares begin this way, with these words. The sick fantasies he indulged in when he thinks of his very worst fears.

The breath catches in Gabe’s throat, his heart pauses, the air is frozen, there is nothing, nothing, nothing-

And then the air fills his lungs again and a wave of fear hits him, so strong and so intense he nearly falls to his knees. He grabs at the front of Finn’s shirt instead, blindly. 

“Is he okay-”

But Finn is shaking his head before he finishes speaking. 

Gabe’s stomach bottoms out, his blood goes cold and his breath catches, the world spinning around him. He yanks Finn closer, dizzily.

“Is he alive?”

Finn’s second of hesitation turn’s Gabe’s entire world on its axis.

-

They run the entire way to the beach, and then to the physician’s

It’s a small place, not nearly big enough to be qualified as a hospital, and certainly not big enough to be suitable for the care of an entire island.

They had found Puck and Sean on the beach, the mist turned to rain, Puck’s hair stringy, eyes wide and shaken, and Sean slightly less passive than usual. There are people about, yelling over the wind, horses being corralled away.

Puck stops Gabe before he can come any closer, planting a wet hand on his chest.

“Tommy-” he gasps, his lungs tight and on fire from running, but he doesn’t see Tommy, where is Tommy -

“They took him,” Puck says. “He was alive, but- it looked bad, Gabe.”

 _He’s alive, it’s bad, but he’s alive,_ is what Gabe hears. _He’s alive, but just barely. Don’t get your hopes up._

“Where?” Gabe demands.

Sean steps forward and puts a hand on Puck’s arm, but he’s looking at Gabe. “Physician’s. We’ll come.”

Gabe runs, because he doesn’t know how to walk at a time like this. If Tommy’s not okay, he doesn’t know how he’ll ever be able to walk again. He doesn’t want to consider it, he doesn’t want to think. The wind whips at their faces, fierce and cold.

There is a small crowd outside the physician’s. Beech is there.

When he grabs Gabe’s arm, his face is pale. “Gabe, oh god, I’m sorry-”

Gabe’s stomach plummets so fast his vision nearly goes black, blurring as all the air leaves his lungs as nausea takes over. _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry-_

Beech grabs him around the waist as he keels forward, the meager contents of his stomach clawing its way up his throat. As if from far away, he hears the crowd murmur and yelp and someone saying _“It’s Gabe Connolly, Tommy’s best friend, it’s the Connollys, oh, those poor Connollys.”_

“Gabe, Gabe!” Beech is saying, fuzzy and distant in his ear, as he gags his lunch onto the ground. Someone has their cold hand on the back of his neck, someone is gripping his arm.

“He’s still alive, Gabe,” he hears Beech say, and then someone is pulling his face into their chest, and it’s damp and cold, but Gabe breathes, shivering, and he realizes it’s Puck.

“There aren’t any more physicians for a sick boy,” he hears someone say, slightly annoyed, and someone else says, “Get him a blanket,” and then the door is opening, and Tommy’s father is bringing them inside.

_

                                                                                                                 

“He should be stable,” the nurse says later, after so much waiting, “but unconscious.” They sit in the tiny waiting room, a cluttered space full of pudgy couches and spindly chairs, Gabe, Puck, Finn, Beech, and Tommy’s parents. They had been brought food, but Gabe had not touched any of it. Sean Kendrick had not followed them inside.

 _Should be stable._ Which doesn’t mean he _is_ stable. He just _should be._

“His face,” the nurse says, voice softening slightly, “won’t be the same.”

Tommy’s mother lets out a small sob.

Gabe doesn’t care, as long as he is alive, as long as he’d be okay.

“Can we see him?” Tommy’s father asks, and the nurse nods. When Tommy's parents go in, the Connollys and Beech don’t follow.

Gabe hasn’t cried, not really, but his face feels swollen, and his eyes hurt. He runs a hand over his face.

“He’ll be okay,” Beech says beside him, quietly. “He has to be.”

“I don’t think water horses really care if he’s a person worth living, Beech,” Gabe says, and he feels his first niggling of anger, of a terrible, deep-seated hatred. One that has been festering, and festering, and festering for years. He _hates_ those horses, he hates this revolting island and its traditions. Tommy, the best thing this island had, had nearly been victim of such a heinous _festivity._

No one says anything else, the air silent, a clock ticking somewhere nearby.

-

Gabe isn’t sure what time it is by the time Tommy’s parents finally emerge from his room, faces tear-streaked. They thank the Connollys and Beech for being there, and then they leave, and Beech asks the nurse if they can see Tommy.

It’s not allowed, technically, because they’re not blood relatives, but there is no one who really keeps rules here. Not on an island that doesn’t really live by any rules.

Gabe feels his heart begin to pick up with a new sort of anxiety, because he knows that in his mind there will always be the Tommy before, and the Tommy after. But mostly he just wants to see him, wants to see with his own two eyes that Tommy is alive.

Finn ends up leading the way into the room.

Tommy’s face won’t be the same, but they can’t really see it, it’s bandaged so heavily. An entire half of his face is hidden, and his exposed eye is a deep, dark bruise, bleeding into his cheek.

“Fuck,” Beech says under his breath.

“He’ll be okay?” Finn is the one to ask the nurse, voice so small and soft it’s the first thing that truly, strangely, makes Gabe want to cry.

“He’s stable,” she says, which isn’t a yes or a no, but it’s not a _should be._

Gabe blinks, and blinks again.

“Is he in a coma?” Beech asks.

The nurse shakes her head. “Just under sedatives. He should wake up by morning.”

She leaves the room, and its suddenly quiet except for Tommy’s breathing. Gabe blinks, and blinks.

“Sit, Gabe,” Puck says softly, pointing to a chair, and normally he’d leave it for someone else, but he sits. Finn takes the one beside him, and Puck squeezes into it with him. Beech perches on the arm of Gabe’s.

They sit there, and they don’t know what to say. Gabe listens to Tommy’s breaths, soft.

-

Sometime later the physician comes back to switch out some of Tommy’s bandages, the ones on his arm and his stomach, and she mentions that it’s late, which means they should probably leave. Beech stands.

Gabe doesn’t want to leave. He doesn’t want to go back to their house. He doesn’t want to leave Tommy. But not even Tommy’s parents stayed.

Fingers touch the skin of his wrist. “You can come back in the morning, Gabe,” Puck says.

When he’s awake. And possibly brain damaged. And in terrible pain.

Beech pats his shoulder, and they lead him out.

-

Gabe wakes from a fitful sleep, surprised he actually fell asleep at all. His eyes feel crusted and sore, and when he runs a hand through his hair, he finds it greasy and fishy.

Knowing there isn’t any more sleep coming for him now that he’s awake, he slips out of bed quietly to wash up in the bathroom. It’s very early and the house is dark.

He shivers as he dumps water over his head, a perfunctory task. Then he pulls on some warm clothes, his coat and his boots, and he slips out the door. The world around him is quiet and cold, and bathed in the muted blue of dawn.

He wants to go to the physician’s, but it’s too early. So he walks. He walks along the man-trodden paths and by the cliffs and the rocks. He keeps his head down and his hands in his pockets. The world feels unsettlingly empty when visiting Tommy’s doorstep is not an option. The thought of going by when Tommy isn’t there is even worse.

The dawn presses in around him, sky a slate of clouds overhead. The path stretches on before him, the sea to the right of him, the fields to the left, but there’s nowhere to go. None of these places hold anything.

So this is what it’s like, Gabe thinks to himself, ignoring the trembling of his fingers deep in his pockets, when his worst fears finally come true.

When the sky is light enough, he goes back to the physician’s.

Tommy’s mother is there, sitting at Tommy’s bedside, because of course she is, she’s his mother. She looks like she hasn’t slept at all, eyes shadowed and puffy, but she smiles when she sees Gabe. She has Tommy’s lips, Tommy’s eyes, his pretty face.

“I was waiting for you to show up,” she says.

Tommy looks much like he did the evening before, except the bruise on his face has deepened and his head is tilted slightly onto it’s good side. He breathes in and out slowly.

“What?” Gabe says distractedly.

“I came back early this morning, I couldn’t stay away,” she says. She’s holding Tommy’s hand, stroking his fingers gently. “I think it was a mother’s intuition. He woke up just after I arrived.”

Gabe’s heart leaps. “He woke up?”

She nods, looking down. “It was a shock for him. He’s in a lot of pain.”

Gabe swallows. It’s not as if he expected anything less, but he doesn’t like to imagine it.

“They gave him some pills to put him back out, and he shouldn’t wake up again for a while yet. But I didn’t want to leave him alone.” She looks at Gabe again, and her gaze turns soft. “But now that you’re here I hope you don’t mind me passing him along to you.”

There’s something in her eyes that makes Gabe want to squirm in his shoes. It’s not a bad thing.

“No,” Gabe chokes out, shaking his head. “Not at all.”

Tommy’s mother stands up from her chair and walks to him, squeezes his hand. “I’m glad he has you,” she says.

“I- I’m glad I have him,” Gabe says, the words coming out of his mouth awkwardly. But they feel like they’re the right thing to say.

She smiles, and her eyes fill with tears. “So am I,” she says, and she kisses his cheek before she leaves the room, wiping her hands over her eyes.

-

He doesn’t mean to, but Gabe ends up falling asleep in the chair beside Tommy’s bed. Tommy’s deep breathing, familiar and slow, calms him.

When he wakes up, neck stiff from the way he’d curled into the armchair, the shadows in the room have shifted and Tommy’s uncovered eye is staring at him from the bed.

Gabe starts so violently he falls right out the chair.

There’s a loud laugh from the bed. It cuts off sharply with a painful intake of breath.

“Tom,” Gabe gasps, pushing himself up onto his knees, trying to shake off the grogginess. His heart pounds, because _Tommy’s awake._ He kneels beside Tommy’s bed, meets his gaze.

Tommy looks at him, his exposed eye watery, perhaps because of the laugh, perhaps because of the pain, perhaps because of everything. But that’s all it takes.

“Tommy,” Gabe says, and he can feel his hands beginning to shake against the sheets. Tommy’s face shines purple from the bruise around his eye.

Tommy lets out a hum, quiet and low, and for some reason it scares Gabe.

“Tom,” he says again, because that’s all he can seem to manage, his name. His fingers grip the sheets because he wants to hold Tommy’s good hand – his mother had been – but he doesn’t know how to touch him. “Tom, can you talk?”

Tommy’s voice comes out gravely, his lips barely moving. “Don’t wanna,” he says. “Hurts.”

A wave of relief crashes over Gabe, one that makes him realize just how grateful that even if Tommy’s face is never the same, at least he has his mind.

“I’m sorry,” Gabe says, voice strangely thick, not quite sure why he’s saying it, but then he feels Tommy’s hand touch his and he realizes that he’s crying.

“Gabe,” Tommy says quietly, not moving his lips.

“No,” Gabe says, vision blurring as he shakes his head. “Don’t talk.”

“Gabe,” Tommy says again, anyway, and he feels Tommy’s hand grab at his where his fingers are beginning to claw into the bedsheets.

“No,” Gabe says again, and a sob slips out of his lips and it's ugly, and he covers his mouth with one hand as Tommy slips his into the other.

And then he’s crying so hard he can’t speak, can hardly breathe. Everything is twisting inside him like knives and he’s got one fist pressed into his mouth and Tommy’s got his wrapped around the other, squeezing Gabe’s fingers with what little strength he has.

This is what it is, Gabe thinks as his lungs grasp for air and his chest shakes, for his worst fears to come true, but also not.

Tommy reaches up and rubs some of his tears away, but there are too many, and everything is so wet and messy that Gabe doesn’t even try to dry his cheeks, doesn’t even care. He grabs Tommy’s hand and presses his lips to every part of it, covering it in kisses and tears.

He doesn’t know how long it takes for him to finally calm, his cheek pressed into the cool bedsheets beside Tommy, knees digging into the rug, Tommy’s hand carding gently through his hair. It’s quiet, and Gabe hopes no one else comes in, because he doesn’t want to move, not ever.

But he does, because he’s not the one who should be getting taken care of right now. He lifts his head, and everything feels heavy and swollen. Tommy doesn’t take his hand out of his hair.

“Are you hungry? Do you need more medicine?” Gabe asks him, and even his tongue feels weighed down and sluggish.

“In’a minute,” Tommy says through still lips.

“You must be in pain, though,” Gabe says.

Tommy doesn’t say anything, and Gabe leans forward and presses his lips to the skin of his elbow, the only place he can reach.

“I’ll get the nurse,” says Gabe. “You don’t need to worry about me anymore.”

Even though he can barely move his face, Gabe can see the _yeah, right_ in Tommy’s eyes.

Gabe pulls Tommy’s hand from his hair and wraps it in both of his, pressing Tommy’s fingers to his mouth. _You’re alive. I’m okay. I was just scared._

Tommy sighs.

Gabe fetches the nurse.

_

Puck wins the Scorpio Races.

Gabe thinks he’s had enough stress to last him at least fifty lifetimes.

Puck sits beside Tommy’s bed, recounting the whole thing, Finn throwing in details every now and then.

“Finn Connolly, you gambling bastard,” Tommy says when they tell him about how Finn won the money from betting on Puck. Puck and Finn laugh, and Tommy glances over at Gabe with a half grin on his face, still stiff and healing.

His bruises had faded nicely, and though the left side of his face would never be the same, and his eye never quite good for seeing out of, it wasn’t as terrible as Gabe had thought it’d be when the bandages had finally come off.

“You can wear cool eye patches,” Beech had told him. “Get Dory Maud to embroider you one.”

Tommy had laughed at that. “Sure, and lose my other eye?”

Most days, Tommy was in good spirits like that. But there were his bad days, too.

“I hate it,” he’d said lowly one evening after it had rained all day outside. “My skin feels awful and stiff, it’s so hideous.”

“It’s not,” Gabe had said, running a hand down his arm.

“A nurse showed me my reflection in a mirror, I wanted to throw up,” Tommy said, and he did look a shade paler all of the sudden. He paused. “I’ve lost half of my vision, Gabe.”

Gabe was quiet.

“I know it’s stupid,” Tommy said, looking away from him.

“It’s not,” Gabe said again. He stood up and leaned over, carefully, and pressed a kiss to the bad side of Tommy’s face. The skin of his cheek felt unfamiliar beneath his lips, but he’d get used to it.

“Don’t,” Tommy said, turning his face away.

Gabe had bit the inside of his lip. He had never been as good at comforting Tommy as Tommy had always been toward him. He wanted to tell Tommy he was beautiful, would always be beautiful. He was different, but still so beautiful.

Instead, he took one of Tommy’s hands into his own, and when Tommy began to cry, he brought Gabe’s hand up to his face and used it to wipe away his tears, like a handkerchief.

And when Tommy asked him to _please, don’t leave_ that night, he stayed.

-

Puck and Finn had found a way to keep the house, and Gabe is so fiercely proud and relieved he pulls them both into a hug.

“Wow,” Finn says, startled.

But when he releases them, he finds Puck’s eyes are sad.

“You’re still leaving, though, aren’t you?” she says quietly.

He nods once. “I have to.”

Her eyes are still sad, but something in them shifts. Something a little more understanding, a little more mature. She nods, and Gabe feels grateful.

“It’s not fair that you get to take Tommy Falk away from us, though,” she says, and Finn nods in agreement, pouting slightly.

Gabe flicks them both in the arm. “Well, life’s not fair, haven’t you heard?”

“Yeah,” Puck says, but a small smile is beginning to form on her lips. “I’ve heard something like that.”

 

_

 

“I don’t think I’m going to ride in any more Scorpio Races.”  

Gabe blinks into the cool light of morning. His entire body is wrapped in warmth. “What?” he croaks out.

Tommy is staring up at the window. Outside, little specks of white swirl from a whiter sky. “It’s snowing,” he says, and smiles slightly. Then he looks at Gabe again, his bad eye a bit droopy. “I’m not going to race in any more Scorpio Races.”

Gabe blinks. “Oh.”

Tommy nudges him beneath the covers. He’s stiff, still not yet fully recovered, but okay enough to live on his own again. “Try not to sound too disappointed.”

So Gabe doesn’t say anything. He hadn’t even considered the possibility that Tommy would race again, but to hear him actually say the words is like pulling a splinter out of his chest that has been there so, so long.

“Can we go now, Gabe?” Tommy says, voice quiet in his ear.

Gabe doesn’t say _what do you mean?_ or _but it’s the dead of winter,_ or _you’re not fully recovered yet._

Gabe turns his head to look at him more fully, and he says, “Yes.”

A smile comes over Tommy’s face, relieved and open, and Gabe presses his mouth to the corner of his lips, his scarred cheek, his ruined eyelid. Tommy leans into it, and everything is so warm as the freezing snow falls outside.

 _“Gabe Connolly shouldn’t be hanging all over Tommy Falk like that_ ,” Gabe had heard whispered, some years ago. It had hurt him, confused him.

He kisses Tommy beneath his eye, along his nose. Death is something that still feels very much alive, and Gabe has decided that he is not going to waste any more time between now and then – whenever that may be – not kissing Tommy, not being near him in every way.

He’s glad he never listened.

 

TOMMY

“We’re almost fucking there!” Beech shouts, wind whipping through his hair.

“Stop swearing, they’re going to send us right back if they hear that mouth of yours,” Tommy says, flicking him on the back of the head.

The summer sky shines a clear blue above them, and the sea a clear blue beneath them. The waves rock the ferry and Tommy is grateful he doesn’t get seasick.

“I can see it, though, the land,” Beech says, pointing. Tommy looks. His vision has recovered surprisingly well after all these months, though it’ll never be perfect, or like it was. The brain is more malleable than skin.

He hears footsteps on the deck and feels a hand on the small of his back. “Just a little sliver of land,” Gabe murmurs, just for Tommy to hear.

“Oh yeah, just that little sliver of land,” Tommy says to Beech, nodding.

Beech crosses his arms, looking out over the railing. “Yeah, see what I mean?”

“Yes, exactly,” Tommy says, and sends a wink over to Gabe, who grins. Tommy thinks he looks wonderful, wind slipping through his hair and surrounded by blue. He wants to kiss him, but Beech was being a sore sport and started complaining about that earlier.

“I know the mainland has more freedom _,_ but you guys are my best friends and I just have to say I don’t need to see this,” he’d said after Gabe had leaned over and pressed a kiss to Tommy’s cheek out of the sheer joy of finally leaving.

Gabe had been like that, since the accident over half a year ago, using any and every reason to kiss Tommy. Not that Tommy complained. He’d half expected Gabe to lean over and kiss him as they disembarked from the dock, still waving to Puck and Finn and Sean and a dozen or so other Thisby locals.

Not quite, though.

Still, it had been something when Puck had pulled him close as she said goodbye, and whispered in his ear, “Take care of him.”

He promised he would. He’d made that promise a long, long time ago.

It feels surreal, to be nearing the mainland. Beech on one side, yelling his head off, and Gabe on the other, hand gentle on the back of his neck, steady, and his presence close. He had never quite imagined it this way, and it’s good.

Then he sees it, with his own eyes, the sliver of land. The air is so fresh. 

They’re nearly there.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [curious cat](https://curiouscat.me/peanutbutterapple)   
>  [tumblr](http://hugoweasley.tumblr.com/)


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